Pledged
by Choco
Summary: Besieged, Link and Zelda find comfort in each other...and something else. LxZ. Chapter 7: 'He dreamt of the tower where his epic battle ended...'
1. Chapter 1: Link

Pledged

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Disclaimer: I don't own Zelda.

I really, really, shouldn't be writing another chaptered Zelda fic, since I have one I haven't updated in a long while, but the idea for this one came to me and wouldn't leave. Hopefully writing it down will get it out. A caveat: this isn't the "traditional" Zelink fic, or at least I hope it's not. If you want pure fluff, look elsewhere.

I've done some research on siege warfare (thanks, Google!), and I hope it's enough. But if you're more knowledgeable than me about this sort of thing and want to correct some glaring inaccuracy, please do so. I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing!

Anyway...please enjoy!

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Like a thousand fallen stars, the nightfires of the besiegers below began to blaze beneath the bruised purple sky.

From here, the top of Hyrule Castle and the end of his world, Link thought he could hear the song they sang, a prayer issuing from a host forty thousand strong. _Sweet Nayru, bless us with your gentle tidings..._

A stiff breeze picked up, blowing the smell of death, smoke, and shit his way, and his mouth twisted. _Would that she would bless me._ He had never been especially blessed though, and most certainly not by Nayru, so he set his mouth and kept the silence while he walked. As he approached the catapult, he attempted to count the nightfires, that he might know what to expect when the host set up their trebuchets for that night's assault. He lost count around five hundred, but the falling night seemed darker to him than the one before. _Less fires than I've seen for a moon's turn...but is that to the good, or only a ploy to get our guard down?_

The butt of the soldier's spear nudged casually against his back, a nagging ache. "Hurry _up_, we don't have all night," came the high-pitched voice of his judge from behind. "We must needs ready the catapults for the counterattack; His Grace insists. I want this taken care of as quickly as possible."

The catapult loomed before him, too large and too menacing to be real. Mildew covered the wood in a greenish fuzz, but there was no mistaking the deadly potential it exuded even at rest. There was nothing he wanted to do more than to walk away from it, but there were enough soldiers behind him -- all half-starved, and nothing to fear under ordinary circumstances -- that he wasn't willing to press the issue. After all, he was malnourished too, a shadow of the man he had once been.

Link stopped once more, exhausted, his heart throbbing in his chest. They'd brought him up to the roof from the lowest dungeons without stopping, a gruesome trip for someone who had broken his fast with horse and turnip only once in the past three days. It was the same for the soldiers around him, he knew; surely they'd be glad for the respite...

His judge swept in front of him, a dramatic display in his flowing black robes. He gave off the stink of rotting meat, but that couldn't be helped; water was rationed now, too precious to be wasted on baths. Instead of focusing on a problem they shared, Link focused his hates on the man's face, the pinched ratlike features he had in common with his father.

"If you will not move, so be it. I can sentence you just fine right here, turncloak," the man sneered. "Once it's done, however, my men shall be constrained to carry you to the catapult. I can see that plain enough; the stink of cowardice is all over you."

Link grimaced. _Was it necessary to name me traitor? Is it treason to find a way to save your king?_ He thought not; that was why he and a dozen other men had hidden hammers stolen from the armory in their beds, and at night hammered out a tunnel to freedom in Link's cell. For the kingdom, they told themselves, but that was a noble lie...they only wanted to escape before the garrison was reduced to eating rats. Surely the lords leading the host would be satisfied with land concessions, they told themselves...only one of their own turned his cloak before they ever found out, and it was death to try to escape the castle. The king had decreed it. Soon they were all found out, and to a man they had been flung over the castle walls, left to the mercy of the host that awaited them. Link was the last that remained.

He faced his fate unafraid...or, at least, his anger dominated the fear for now. It was one of the king's _bastards_ who served as his "judge", since the king and queen couldn't be bothered to judge such lowborn filth.

__

Aye, the king...how could I ever forget about the king? King Berent Pollard, the First of His Name. _Zelda's royal husband._ Her husband...he remembered that day, the sweet summer day she had come to him in the forest dressed as a peasant -- but this time, unlike all the other times she'd visited, she fell to her knees and pleaded with him to attend her wedding. For friendship, she said, but even so there had not been a thing he'd wanted to do less. Yet he knew his duty. So he went to see her wed in the Temple of Time, feeling awkward in the crowd of lords and ladies. She had been more beautiful than he'd ever seen her when she swept down the aisle in her virginal white gown to her destiny; her betrothed had been past fifty, and so feeble he had to be carried in a litter to his maiden bride. Afterward, at the wedding feast, Link had settled for kissing Zelda's fingers and wishing her marriage every happiness. That was the last he saw of her. Once she'd passed from her father's protection to her husband's, he had gone across the sunlit sea, knowing Hyrule no longer had a place for him...

...Only to find ten years later, his fighting across the water done, that he had a place in Hyrule. Her letter found him on the shores of Calatia, bloody and exhausted from his adventures. He held the parchment stupidly, examining her spidery hand as if it could convey some special meaning. Finally he took it to a man who had his letters and listened to the correspondence with a faint amount of shock. She welcomed him back into the king's peace, and craved his return to Hyrule. She meant for him to stay in Hyrule Castle with a high post in the castle garrison, and all the honors due him. She hoped the letter found him in good spirits... _She remembers me_, he remembered thinking incredulously.

He sailed back across the sea, wondering what it would be like to see comely Zelda as a woman grown -- but when he came ashore, his fantasies were shattered against the jagged rocks that prevented safe anchorage for the trading vessel that had brought him home. The world had gone mad. House Pollard, now ruled by the second or third son, had called its banners and was preparing to march on Hyrule Castle. Lord Pollard had declared Good Queen Zelda barren and no fit wife, he heard in winesinks along the way to Hyrule Castle; the lord wanted her put to the sword, that his brother might marry one of his cousins. The king, in his good judgment, declared his brother a traitor to the Crown, and accordingly stripped him of all lands and incomes. It was an insult that could not go unanswered, and Lord Pollard declared war shortly before his host began its slow march north.

Link found no high post in the garrison awaiting him when he came to the castle, no honors, and only laughter when he presented his ragged correspondence from Zelda to the guard at the gate. Hyrule Castle had an insatiable need for soldiers, however, so he was able to join the garrison anyhow.

He was still in training when the armies met outside Hyrule Castle's gates, so he was not among the thousands who had smashed themselves to bloody bits against the shields of Pollard's massive host. Only when his loyal lords' armies had been depleted and the number of men in his garrison dropped to a thousand did the king draw back behind his walls. Link was disgusted; apparently, sixty years in Hyrule had not taught the king caution. At least the women and children were gone, housed with the sympathetic lordlings who still pledged fealty to the Crown. Only Good Queen Zelda remained; she was made of sterner stuff than the pampered ladies of her court, it seemed. _Yet we've lived in the same castle for a year, and I have not seen her._

And how desperately he wanted to see her again. Did she look as he remembered? Was her wit as sharp now as it had been then, when the long conversations they had seemed to last twenty minutes instead of two hours? Not that he was like to find out -- not with the siege all around them. While a part of the garrison, he spent his time piling huge mountains of dirt against the castle walls so Pollard's men could not use siege towers, boiled oil day and night for the murder holes, and picked off the more careless with arrows, but it wasn't nearly enough. One day here was much like another, and soon he was only aware of the changing seasons -- and that Zelda had not once bestirred herself from her apartments, or so it seemed. _Would that I could see her just once before I die._

The last notes of the prayer to Nayru reached him, swelled, and finally fell. As it faded Link realized the song had sent him into a trancelike state, a knowledge that left him cold. He must needs get something in his belly before he died raving...only that wasn't a problem anymore, was it? _Anything's possible so long as I live_, he reminded himself.

"That was folly. Have they lost their wits?" The bastard was frowning, his gaze fixed past the ramparts and on the host on Hyrule Castle's once-green grounds. For a moment Link allowed himself to hope, till his judge turned back around to face him. There was nothing in his eyes but contempt. "You're dead, traitor. Men."

The soldiers moved forward, the heavy plate they wore clinking. For a moment Link was seized by an animal fear, till he remembered that he must be brave; after that, he forced himself to walk forward on unsteady feet and weak legs, unable to close his eyes to his doom any longer. _Zelda_, he thought, _when I'm killed for a traitor, will you remember me still?_

__

Zelda... He had thought himself defenseless as a babe in the face of his death sentence, ever since they'd found his tunnel he'd thought it, but that wasn't true at all. There was one defense he had left, so he stopped before his judge and tried it. "You'll not execute me. You need me."

The bastard's gaze was hard, unyielding. "Give him one more chance to get into the catapult. If he won't, make an end."

Link drew breath, knowing he must show no fear before that gaze or all was lost. He would have to rely on his words -- such flimsy things they were, yet somehow all the shield he had. He used them now. "I was a friend of the queen, once. She will be grievously upset when she learns of my death."

Not getting the overt hint, the bastard's eyebrows drew together. "I think I know Her Grace a deal better than you do, turncloak."

There was a tenseness in his frame, a venom with which he said the title that made the younger man decide to try a different approach. Link smiled; it was time to cast the die, to take the chance. "Do you? Ah, of course you do. How could I ever have doubted that? Why, I'll bet the queen treats you as though you're one of her own. Why don't you kill me, then? I'm sure your sweet loving _mother_ will understand."

"_Stop_ it!" The bastard was beet red, and while Link was glad his words had the desired effect he did not allow himself to feel relief. That would be too easy, and he knew the hard part was just beginning. "I'll not have my _honor_ questioned by an ill-bred--"

"Oh...I am deeply sorry if I gave offense." The bastard was prickly for his age; he looked to be forty, yet the subject of his father's royal wife still bothered him. Link decided not to push the issue any further, unwilling to lose any advantage he might have gained by goading his judge to further anger. "There's an easy way to prove I tell it true, you know. Take me to the queen. She'll be of a mind to confirm everything I've just told you, I think."

Choosing between his father's orders and his stepmother's potential pleasure was hard, Link saw, but not hard enough; he could see Zelda winning the battle being waged behind the man's eyes. Excitement, and dread, and anger mingled in his belly till he felt sick. _Soon,_ he promised himself, _soon I shall see Zel--_

"_Trebuchet!_"

The warning was too little too late. Burning rocks began hitting the ramparts long before the first man had turned to run. Most of the rocks bounced harmlessly off the castle's fortified walls; some found their intended targets, though. In an instant the catapult intended to fling him over the castle walls was afire; another rock hit an idle soldier in the head, sending him flying backward into a pile of hay. He died screaming, his brothers allowing the fire to burn itself out for lack of water. Men were approaching the dead soldier by the time the fire had dwindled to embers, looking for armor to salvage. Nothing would go to waste.

Link had been watching with an expression of queer interest, his mind elsewhere -- he had learned to do that long ago on his adventures, to separate himself from horrible acts, and he found he'd come to rely more heavily on that talent during this year-long siege. By the time he returned to himself the bastard had hold of one of his arms, and was taking him to the ladder that led down to the lower levels of the castle. Fear and pleasure battled for dominance in him. _What new horror awaits me, now that the catapult is destroyed?_

A fleeing soldier passed them, but paused long enough to smile at the bastard. "Good, you're keeping him. We may soon be forced to eat our dead. No sense wasting good meat."

The nonchalant words chilled him. _He's resigned to his fate_, Link observed as the soldier trotted away, _but I'm not_. Did that make him a traitor, or merely an optimist? In this castle it was becoming increasingly hard to tell.

They descended the ladder as the second wave of burning rocks hit, sending up a flurry of agonized screams that chased them down into the corridor below. The bastard seemed helpful enough as they climbed down, but when they reached the bottom he gripped Link so tightly he thought his arms were like to break off. "I'll take you to the queen, as you ask," the bastard growled, "for I'll not be blamed for killing one in her favor. But if you play me false, I _will_ use you for meat when the rats and radishes are gone. _You hear me?_"

"I do." Link knew then that the bastard was his, which was all to the good. _He's no friend of mine, but he'll prove useful in doing as I ask._

The bastard nodded once, curtly, then turned to lead him through the labyrinthine corridors that led to Zelda's chambers. Left, right, left, then right and right and right till he was dizzy. The dizziness didn't stop the other feelings, though. _Will I find her abed, too weak to stand or even speak? Will she be as thin as the rest of us? Or will she be crying, her eyes red and her hair in disarray from grief? She will share her tears with me, I'm sure of it._

They stopped before a door not unlike any of the others they'd passed on their way here. "Her Grace's chambers," the bastard announced, then smiled a slimy smile. "Do you fear to enter the door of your beloved _friend_?"

"No." Annoyance pricked at him. Didn't the man understand the significance this reunion for him? "I'm waiting for you to leave."

For a moment, the bastard looked fairly shocked. Then he laughed, but Link could see submission rising to the surface all the same. "Leave? As you wish...but you best not be thinking to run away. You'll be lost in the corridors of Hyrule Castle if you don't know where you're going, and you'll never be found...or so I hear."

With that, the bastard walked away, his steps light. When he was nothing more but a faint echo on the stones, Link breathed in, slow and smooth, and stepped forward. As he approached the door, he remembered a great deal of things: how they met for the first time, the meeting they'd shared the day before he left for Termina, the sweet summer day she'd told him of her wedding...he tried to recall how her face had looked when she told him that, but the memory of it was lost to him. _In a moment I shall see her again, and I will never forget her face,_ he resolved.

The man that knocked on the door could not be him, could not, yet it was him who heard the queen when she yelled out, "Enter!" The handle felt strange in his suddenly clumsy fingers, yet he opened the door all the same -- and there she was, where he had seen her a thousand times when Hyrule Castle had been sunlit and flag-lined. _Zelda_, he tried to say to her as he entered, _Zelda_, but her name was stuck in his throat.

__

Zelda. She sat at her desk. Before her was a half-eaten capon; she was spearing chunks of meat on the point of her dagger and eating it in small sharp bites, throwing aside the bits she misliked. _She throws a goodly part of the bird into the rushes while the garrison dines on horse stew..._

__

Zelda. She was more elaborately draped than she had ever been. The white gown she wore was sweat-stained, but silk all the same. The dagged sleeves reached the floor, and swirls of rubies red as blood dripped down the side of that rich fabric. A slim crown rested in her golden curls, glowing with rubies as beautiful as those on her gown. There was no mistaking her for a peasant now; it seemed that queenship had won her -- in body, at least.

__

Zelda. Yet the years had not been kind to her. Though she couldn't have been more than thirty her body sagged and bulged beneath the beautiful gown she wore, bearing the signs of recent childbirth and lazy living. Somewhere in the time he had been away from her she had fallen victim to a pox; she wore the scars from it all over a face flushed with drink. Yet her eyes were as he remembered, pale blue and sharp with intelligence...and her thick golden hair, though undressed, tumbled down her back in those loose curls he liked so well. She turned to face him more fully when she heard him enter, and though she seemed to look at him her face was so still that Link wondered if she was seeing him at all.

"Link?" she finally asked in a whisper that trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. "Link...is that truly you? You still look half a boy." The dagger fell to the rushes, forgotten. She rose with surprising grace for all her weight, and started toward him with such temerity that Link knew she thought him the manifestation of her dreams. "I dreamt you dead half a hundred times. You are cruel to come to me now. How did you get into my castle? Have you come to play the champion once more, is that it?" She stopped before him, touched his face with cold fingers, and seemed to disbelieve even then.

The stink of wine was on her, sour and unpleasant, but it didn't matter, no more than anything else did now that she had touched him. "Your Grace--I--" His voice broke; his bravado failed. He fell and bent the knee to this woman, to this _queen_, moved by some strong emotion he did not recognize, or pretended not to. "Your Grace... I am come to you once more to deliver you to safety. It has been..._so_ long."


	2. Chapter 2: Zelda

**Update (2/13/05):** Wow, QuickEdit didn't seem to like my italics. Or my spaces. _Or_ my commas. I think I managed to catch all the errors this time. If you've already read this chapter...no, there's no new content, the errors just bugged me.

First of all, thanks to all my kind reviewers. Reviews always make me feel warm and fuzzy!

This was a hard chapter to write (you all care, I know). There's a lot of background info in this one, but I think it's worth it. Well, I don't have anything else to say...if you want, tell me what you think of the story so far with a review!

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In fear and dread, Zelda took one more step. _That's the last, the very last I can bear. One more step, and I'll see the field...and if I look out on that field, I am lost._ That much she knew yet her feet moved without her consent, nimbly picking through the ruin that littered the castle roof, leading her onward to doom. One more step, and one more step after that, and then she knew herself for lost.

The moon had risen and the besiegers' nightfires burned, as they did every night. It hurt her heart to look at them; they were only another reminder of how helpless she was in her castle, and Zelda hated helplessness. Seeking distraction, she turned her gaze on Pollard's men moving below. Berent had been teaching her to count the number of men in a host, but their lessons had never taken place when their foes shifted like flames. Not for the first time, she wondered if this was the night they'd storm the castle, to plunder and rape and claim a kingdom. _If they knew how weak we were, how lost our cause, they'd not delay in doing so..._

It took her more than a few moments to realize what they were really doing, and even then shock delayed her reaction. Then the fury took her, thickening her blood as her heart raced. _They feast! They feast! They dare not!_ But it was true. The strains of a bawdy song reached her like some cruel whisper, and the shrill laugh of a camp follower as well...she even thought she could smell roasted lamb over the stench of corruption that had surrounded Hyrule Castle for a year. _They feast outside the castle walls, while within them men would kill for a radish._ She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry.

Then a sword plunged into her guts, and twisted. She doubled over with a gasp, one hand clutching her stomach and the other gripping a nearby rampart for support. Her legs shook as the pain coursed through her, savaging and tearing, but it faded as quickly as a summer squall.

Trembling, she stood and straightened, waiting for her breathing to slow and her heart to stop its furious rampage. She could taste blood in her mouth where she'd bitten down on her tongue; it had a strange taste to it. _A bad spell._ Not as awful as the agony that had kept her abed for most of the day, but still pretty bad. She knew she should never have eaten that capon, but necessity had outweighed good sense. They'd found the thing long-dead on the roof, rotten and stinking, but the cook crisped it and sprinkled the last salt in the castle on it to hide the foul taste. Zelda wanted to retch even now, but she wouldn't let herself. She needed to eat, and grow strong, and be a queen.

Pleasure feathered through her then, chasing away the last remaining threads of pain. _Link would say I'm already a queen, though. I saw it in his eyes, and heard it in his voice._

Her smile faded quickly, replaced by an expression of extreme unhappiness. In her delusion she had thought the arrival of Link to be a miracle, the panacea the Crown had awaited for nigh on a year. She had pretended not to notice his trembling toothpick legs, the skin pulled taut over his bones, the way she could see the shape of his skull beneath his face. What a _child_ she had acted...at least, until their courtesies had been exchanged. It had been Link who acted the boy then. Once she had pulled him to his feet and given him a moderately comfortable tower room to sleep in, he had begged leave of her presence. And she had given it to him - fool that she was, she let him go _again_.

She should never have let him go the first time. Foolish as she'd been while a girl, fleeing to him in the forest dressed as a common tavern wench, at least she had recognized the importance of their friendship. He'd been in a balm in the dark days after her father announced her betrothal to Berent Pollard, a cousin who could have been her grandfather. Her world had been crumbling around her, while Link - who'd suffered so much only to have his glories erased when they were sent back in time - loomed as eternal as the Temple of Time itself. In him she found comfort and peace. She'd depended on his presence to calm her during her wedding ceremony and when he gave her his generic congratulations later, kneeling and kissing her fingers, she'd wished the moment would never end.

But end it did; Link had gone across the water without so much as a by-your-leave, and she'd been left with Berent. He had to be carried into their bridal chamber, his teeth were all gone, and the king feared her lord cousin would prove too weak to take her maidenhood. That was one fear her father had not had for long; her lord husband did his duty, though he could no more give her pleasure than he could walk under his own power. _Berent is nothing if not dutiful._ She might have loved him for that, but he looked on her as a brood mare who had no place in his life outside their bedchamber...at least, until the siege fell.

Link had been such a central figure in the early years of her life that it was hard not to think of him - often - during the first ten years of her marriage. She'd send runners after him across the water, that she might know what he was doing and what he looked like; no, she'd send him a letter via messenger bird, begging him to return to Hyrule so that she might look on him with her own eyes. She'd written thousands of drafts of that letter, it seemed, all burned unsent until she crafted one to her liking. Finally gathering her courage, she sent her letter off to him...

...and that was when the siege fell.

Zelda knew Lord Emery Pollard only faintly. She'd danced with him at her wedding feast and while he shared the cold courtesy of his brother, his features were so commonplace that she could not bring his face to mind. When he came to Hyrule Castle to pledge his fealty to the Crown he'd scarce looked at her, saving all his cold, unsettling stares for the king. Yet somehow he found it in him to call her barren, and later, to call his banners. _And Berent let it happen, gods save him._

When the king stripped his brother of all lands and incomes, the king's council advised that he should enforce his decree with fire and sword - but Berent refused. Zelda had begged him to do the same, on this very roof she'd begged him - but Berent refused her too. And by that time Lord Emery had called his banners, and was marching on Hyrule Castle with all the strength of the south, and then it was too late.

Though she was confined to her apartments when the armies met before Hyrule Castle's gates, she stood at her arrow slit of a window and looked out at the carnage. Watching that battle was one of the hardest things Zelda had ever done, but she made herself do it all the same. Once, she might have been fighting beside the men below; once, she might have died brave in battle...but her body had grown thick and slow over the years, and now the noblest thing she could do was watch.

It would not stop, the fighting. She watched it every morning and every evening; she witnessed the slaughter and cruelty and courage till her eyes stung with tears. And when the hosts laid down their swords for the night she visited her royal husband, and begged him to withdraw into Hyrule Castle and let Pollard lay siege. They had food for a year or more, she told him; the castle walls could withstand a thousand catapults, she told him. Yet he refused her at every turn. It was the news that Zelda was with child that finally made Berent heed her words, and withdraw behind Hyrule Castle's walls.

Her pregnancy was not a happy one, though she lit candles to appease Farore and prayed to the goddess every evening. She gained hardly any weight while the castle starved all around her, and constantly feared she'd miscarry. When the babe began to move and shift inside of her she found no joy in it; she kept wondering if each kick would be its last. Yet her husband's desire for her was inflamed, and for a while she regretted not leaving through a postern gate with the rest of the women and children before it came to battle...

...and then one of the maids she'd chosen to stay with her throughout the siege fell victim to a strange illness. Smallpox, the doctor called it, but Zelda didn't care what this killer was called; she had an iron sense of justice, and all she knew was that the girl didn't deserve to die, not after she'd survived eight months of a siege. Desperate, she tended to the maid herself: feeding her a queen's portion of choice meat from the kitchens, cooling her brow with tepid water, and telling her of the paradise that awaited her as she shuddered, dying.

She didn't remember the rest but the doctor told her that she came down with the smallpox herself, so she supposed it must be true. For a while the castle held its breath, fearing the last descendant of a royal line three thousand years old would be felled by a pox, but the gods were good and she was spared. The doctor said the potions he gave her induced early birth, but he knew she'd only die if she tried delivery. She'd given her consent to have him use a secret eastern technique to draw the babe from her womb, brushing aside Berent's warnings, but that wasn't all to the good. The doctor fed her magic powder dissolved in wine and, wielding a long knife, drew the babe from her stomach; stillborn it was, blue and bloody and speckled with the pox that had killed it.

That had been two moon's turns ago. Three at most. And still she remembered waking up afterward to her husband looking down at her. His face...

_I'm a monster,_ she thought as she stared out at the besiegers. _My babe is dead, and I cannot cry._

How could she cry, though? In ten years she had miscarried thrice and delivered two stillbirths. The first time she had wept, and for a time the doctor feared she would not recover, and yet...with each failed attempt to get an heir she seemed to feel less and less, her heart hardening to stone, to steel. _Sometimes prayers are answered,_ a voice from the past whispered to her when she arose from her suffering, but she always doubted that voice was hers. She could never be so cruel, so clinical, yet those words controlled her emotions all the same.

In happier days, resigned to her fate, she had dreamed of the children she might bear her husband. A sweet laughing girl or a boy like Link, fierce and loyal. She'd name them Alys for her mother, Berent for her royal husband. _He liked that, I think._ That had not been for some time, of course; long before she found tragedy in childbed and before Berent's brother declared her barren in his rush to war. She'd let go of such childish fancies long ago.

_Such folly._ The bitter thought drew her out of the past and back to the roof. She scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands, furious at herself for letting those memories overwhelm her. _I am become a crone,_ she reflected, _who spends her days thinking of the shadows of what could have been, and what might be._ _What right have I to expect salvation when I cannot seize it on my own? Once I might have done just that, if the gods willed it or no..._

Realizing where her thoughts were taking her she turned sharply, her skirts swirling. She'd dressed dark: a brown wool dress and black cloak, that she might not be seen. No ornament; she would appear to be nothing more than a serving girl even if she was seen. Berent had forbidden her the roof, fearing her death, but the arrival of Link had awoken an urge to look out on the host that she'd not felt since that battle for Hyrule Castle had been fought. _And today's battle has already been fought, it would seem._ As she made her way back to the ladder, she took note of the ashes and carnage and grief all around her. A waste. A most tragic waste.

Only a token force of guards were on the roof tonight, so Zelda slipped down the ladder unseen. How miserable those soldiers must have been on that roof, with no company but their thoughts...not that it was much better down below. The last horses were being slaughtered, the cats were disappearing, and the dogs were almost gone. In a moon's turn, the castle would be down to rats and shoe leather - but it was what came after that which frightened her the most.

_It need not come to that._ Emery Pollard would have to yield sooner or later. His host feasted bravely enough tonight, but they'd been at this siege for nearly a year. Surely he'd offer terms of peace soon...and when he did, she'd kill him for the traitor he was. Her desire to see him die for tearing her country apart was what kept her going during this siege, was what kept her walking even when she felt the familiar painful throb in her belly.

Her thoughts of treason brought her mind to her husband. She'd learned early on in her marriage that Berent could be as hard and queerly cold as his younger brother. When the doctor explained his eastern technique to the king before her last stillbirth, Berent had threatened to open the young man's belly and sew it back up to see how well it served _him_ if any harm should come to Zelda, and for longer than this siege he'd been known to hang servants for the smallest trifle. He'd developed a rather broad definition of treason as well. When he found out a few weeks ago that some garrison men had been trying to escape via a tunnel, he had them thrown over the castle walls. "Let's see how my traitor brother treats with fellow turncloaks," he'd said when he gave the order for their execution.

She was of a mind to visit him now - only to remember that he'd been in seclusion for the past week, and mustn't be disturbed. _Is he eating well?_ Zelda told herself that on the morrow she'd ask one of his maids. She couldn't afford him dying, not now with nearly all the horses gone. It would not do to have the garrison eat their own king.

The annoying pangs that had chased her through the corridors had grown to an agony. Zelda threw herself through her doors and collapsed into the nearest chair, groping for a wineskin. The wine was infused with magic powder that made it sour to her taste, but it calmed the fingers of pain that ran up and down her body before they could grow to the spell that attacked her earlier.

Her maid found her dozing in that chair and announced that the doctor was without and craved audience. "I should like to see him now," Zelda said, hoping her sudden fear didn't steal its way into her voice.

The doctor was a young man, emaciated from besiegement like all the rest - and none too clean, judging from the bloodstains on his robes. Berent had sent for him after her second miscarriage; across the water, he had been renown for his skill in treating women's complaints. He had helped her along to another miscarriage and two stillbirths in as many years, yet Zelda had always treated him kindly enough. She could never remember his name.

He bent the knee before her. "Your Grace," he said in his thickly accented tones, "I've only just finished determining the source of your bodily complaints, though you told me of them a fortnight ago. I bring you sad news..."

"Is it the smallpox? Will it come again?" He had told her it might, and that was what she feared most. She ought to have died of it along with her babe, everyone said so, and she would have if not for the man kneeling before her. Spending another moon's turn abed and delirious might very well be the death of her.

"No," said the doctor, rising, "it won't." But some dark knowledge lurked in his eyes and Zelda needed to know what it was, even if the knowing should kill her.

"What is it, then? Tell me true, or I'll have your tongue out."

The doctor stared at her for a long time before he spoke. "The infection spreads. I've treated it with boiling wine and as many leeches as I dare, Your Grace, but the flesh mortifies all the same. Your water is clouded with pus, and you look more feverish by the day." He paced the room, his robes flapping, as if afraid to face her. "Begging your royal pardon, it is a wonder you are still alive..."

Zelda stared at him and did not speak, wondering what reaction was expected of her. Tears, heated denials, pleas for a different diagnosis? She just felt an inutterable weariness. _I must have known,_ she thought, _I must have always known. From the moment I allowed him to cut the babe free that I might not die in childbed, I knew the risk and the danger._ _Would that I had not left so much undone..._

"I have thought about how best to stop the spread," the doctor was saying. "I might pare the infected flesh off, if it please you, but I fear the area is too delicate for such an operation. There are herbs and potions that might serve...yet the castle's stock of suitable ingredients is quite exhausted. Perhaps if you were to bend the knee to Emery Pollard, surrender your claim to the throne, the gods would grant you a second chance at life..."

Her nostrils flared, all her apathy and fatigue forgotten. "Never." She turned around to face the wall so she wouldn't have to look at him anymore. "Leave me now. I want to be alone. To think."

Once he was gone she began undressing herself, the task taking longer thank it should have; all ten of her fingers seemed broken, snapped by the news the doctor had brought her. Off came the cloak, gown, undergarments, all thrown indiscriminately amongst the rushes. Her body bared, she examined herself in her looking glass and cringed at what she saw. The pox scars were not so bad on her stomach as they were on her face and feet, so it wasn't hard to see the fat wound there where the doctor had wielded his knife to save her. Ulcerous it was, the area around it an angry red and tender to the touch. A _smell_ seemed to come from it, an awful smell riper than the dirt and sweat that clung to her like constant companions. _Death_, she thought, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with despair and fear.

It was too much, one more burden of many placed on her that day. She dressed herself quickly for bed and then took a brush to her hair, tenderly smoothing the last vestiges of her fading beauty. The pox and pregnancy had already stolen the most of the comeliness she'd once had; she wondered when the infection would rob the rest from her. It was a disquieting thought.

Exhausted, she climbed into bed and willed her dreams to take her. They were so vivid, the fever dreams...and in them she was wanted, needed.

Her dreams were turbulent and wild. In one she was standing in a cage that was at once gold and orange and red. _Fire_, she thought, _I'm in a fire, and not dead._ It was true. The heat of it was scalding, more than she could bear, but it did her no harm. Then something wet and thick dropped on her bare shoulder, and she looked up.

Link was above her, hanging from the ceiling by his wrists. He moaned and writhed as the tall flames licked at the soles of his feet, but that did him no good; he was cooked anyway. And as he screamed and begged and died pieces of him liquefied, dripping down on Zelda, beading on her chest and shoulders, running down her back - touching all of her except her ugly pockmarked face. She wanted to catch the droplets, wanted to weep, but she couldn't, not with Berent watching.

He called her now. _Zelda!_ he cried, his voice a whip, and Zelda looked at him. He was beyond the flames, young and strong and upright, standing beside his brother Emery. The yellow warhorn of House Pollard blazed on their red surcoats. _Were ever two brothers so alike and so different, all at once?_ They opened their arms to her, beckoning, and she took the first step towards them. Link's cries reached her once more and she stopped, quaking in sudden fear. Death awaited her outside the flames...

_I am queen._ In fear and dread, Zelda took one more step. _I am queen, and mustn't be afraid. One more step._ One more step. And then another.


	3. Chapter 3: Link

**The story so far (at a reviewer's request!):** After escaping a death sentence, self-imposed exile, and an attack by besiegers, Link shares an emotional reunion with Zelda. Later that night, Zelda stands on the roof while the besiegers feast. She thinks (or angsts) about Link and her husband, the siege, pregnancy, and everything in between. To add to her troubles, her doctor gives her some bad news about a festering wound. The chapter ends with a prophetic dream sequence, which every fic featuring Zelda needs. Three days later story-wise, we have...this! Enjoy!

By the way...thanks, reviewers, for inflating my ego by increasing my review count!

-

For three days, Link had wondered if the king's bastard would view him with awe or contempt now that he'd proven himself a friend of the queen. He would receive nothing but contempt, he knew the moment he saw the man guarding the door to the council room.

"Her Grace commanded me to allow no interruptions. The councilors require silence." Hard and unyielding as glass, the bastard's green eyes crawled over him.

Link gave the older man a sideways look. _What is he looking for? Some flaw to exploit?_ He would be disappointed; all the weakness had melted from Link during this siege, or so he hoped. "Surely your sweet mother wouldn't mind an interruption from _me_...and her councilors won't even know I'm there. That, or they'll pretend not to. M'lords high never pay attention to common folk."

"Should I take the word of a traitor?"

"Maybe you should take the word of the queen. I've been summoned." He handed the parchment to the bastard. Link had no more letters than he'd ever had, so when the maid brought the note to him that morning it had to be read to him. _A high post in the garrison awaits me, with all the honors I'm due._ The taste of remembered shame was so thick in his mouth now that he was like to choke on it. His last correspondence from Zelda had been torn to pieces by the guard at the gate, and the memory of it still galled him.

The bastard's face was still but Link could see the displeasure in his eyes, the desire to shame him. He was on the point of drawing the sword at his waist when the bastard looked up from Zelda's letter, thrust the parchment back at Link, and moved aside. "You may enter. But don't think this means I feel any more kindly towards you, turncloak."

Link allowed himself a moment to taste the triumph. _This man is mine,_ he told himself. "I'm under no such delusion, bastard...but you _do_ have beautiful eyes." He patted the man amiably on the shoulder and opened the door. The king's councilors regarded him silently as he entered.

The council room must have been beautiful once. Dusty tapestries covered the walls, thick carpets were on the floor in place of rushes, and eight lordlings as starved as any garrison man sat at a great wooden table. Every window in the room had been flung open but the air was still thick with the scent of rot, a sickly sweet odor.

Zelda stood before one of those windows in a pale blue samite gown that brought out the color of her eyes and exposed the tops of her heavy sagging breasts. Her hair was an artful tumble arranged so that most of her pockmarked face was hidden, and her ruby crown still burned. One of her hands was held carelessly out of the window, fingers half-curled as though endeavoring to catch the breeze. For a moment the queen looked so atypically vulnerable that Link couldn't take his eyes off of her. "I hear men laughing..." she said wistfully.

The lordling with the black butterfly on his blue surcoat stirred. "Laughing at _us_, most like," he said in a high thin voice. "We've been besieged for a year, Your Grace. To no result, to be sure, but it's mad folly still. The kingdom bleeds, and we bleed with it. Last night we found a few of our men baking their commander in one of the ovens. He was withholding their rations, they said. Your royal husband sentenced the men to death for that, but..."

"I was aware," Zelda said calmly, and as quick as that she was queen again. She withdrew her hand, whirled around...and her eyes found Link. There were no tears in them now; there were precious few people Zelda shared her weaknesses with, he knew. "Link. You are come at last. Be seated."

Link sat in a seat at the end of the immense table and did not speak. The conversation picked up again with scarcely a pause. "This _is_ folly," said another one with a sliver of moon on his breast. "Hiding behind Your Grace's skirts avails us nothing, begging your royal pardon. I still say we should meet Pollard in open battle, and throw all our strength against his. He is grown lax after so much time, and it might be that we have a chance."

"_Might be_," Zelda mocked. "Such uncertain words. A thousand starved garrison men against ten thousand horse and thirty thousand foot? Against all the strength of the south? These odds seem poor to me."

_Poor to me as well,_ Link thought. _What acclaim has this man won in battle, to be so bold?_

An old man with an octorok for his sigil leaned back in his chair, chewing on the nub of a writing quill. "I agree, Your Grace," he said. "But I also must agree that this siege is folly. We were soundly beaten in the field, and there's little hope of victory for us now. As you say, our garrison is starved and unruly, and Lord Emery is well supplied with siege machinery, men-at-arms, and _food_. Food most of all. A wiser woman would bend the knee, it seems to me. There's no shame in it; rulers have done so in the past, and will do so long after we are dust. If they storm the castle and you are taken, it will go hard for yo-"

Zelda turned on the old fool in blue-eyed rage. "I do not mean to be taken." The last word rang in Link's ears, unspoken and deadly. _Alive_. They all heard it, it seemed to Link, but none so keenly as him. For seven years, Zelda had survived despite - or, perhaps, because of - Ganondorf's dread magic power; Link knew such a woman would break before she bent.

"Leave us, councilors," she was saying. "I would speak with Link privily now. Tell the bastard that no one should enter. Tell him I command it."

"As you say, Your Grace," said one with scythe and sword crossed on his surcoat. Silently, with not so much as one glance at Link, the lords filed out.

"Your lords love me not," he said lightly once they were alone. "Am I too common for them?"

"They do not know you as I do. My lords..." The queen stopped and considered, bitterness passing over her face like a dark cloud. "My lords come in two varieties. Green boys and sweet fools. The fools are more common, as you've no doubt seen. But no matter the variety, they all dream of winning immortal acclaim in some song by eating shoe leather and wedding me once my royal husband starves to death. I'd dismiss them all, but I dare not displease Berent." She had been pacing, restless, but for a heartbeat she paused and looked at him. The longing on her face was so clear that Link felt his pulse quicken. "How sorely I've missed you and your counsel. You haven't changed at all."

_Would that I could say the same. _"Does Berent Pollard dress you like that?" he asked her, so softly. "Is it his pleasure to drape you in samite and silk like a princess in a song,that you might behis own sweet daughter?"

"His _daughter_?" She stiffened, her mouth tightening, and just like that the longing was gone. "You do my husband an injustice, Link. Berent's given me a goodly supply of wool gowns over the years, and not nearly enough jewels. The princesses in songs are always well supplied with jewels, as a rule. He hasn't serenaded me with the high harp either; nor has he slain any dragons in my defense. Wholly unsatisfactory as a husband. Evil, even - yes, you've helped me see that now."

Link remembered what she'd said, about not daring to displease her husband. "Is it a new husband you fancy, then?" he asked in a deadly quiet voice. Steel whispered against leather as he stood and drew his sword. "I can make one for you, I swear it."

Her eyes found him again. They were full of poison, full of contempt. "Put your sword away! Do you mean to slip into my husband's bedchamber this very moment and slit his throat with that? Have the years taught you _nothing_? It was naught but a jape, Link...a _bad_ jape, I see now."

Angry and ashamed, Link sheathed his sword. Never had he been the subject of such derision - not from Zelda, not her. _She's as prickly about her marriage as the bastard is about her, it would seem._ The _why_ of it was still a mystery to him, but he thought he was starting to glimpse the truth. "Your Grace..."

The queen sighed and closed her eyes. "No more of this _Your Grace_, Link," she said, sounding weary. "Have you learned courtesy for my sake? It shall not serve, no more than it ever has. We are more to each other than that...or am I wrong?"

_Zelda._ Her name was there, just _there_, just beyond his reach. He hadn't let that name pass his lips since the sweet summer day she'd told him she was to wed one of her cousins, and he didn't know if he could speak it again. But they were all alone and some of the coldness between them was melting, so Link took the chance. "Zelda, then," he said, laughing. How _right_ her name sounded on his tongue. "_Now_ are you pleased?"

For a moment Zelda's pale eyes flickered with amusement, but the moment quickly passed. She dropped her gaze and resumed her pacing. "I'm sufficiently pleased," she allowed. "I suppose I should be glad you've learned some courtesies, though. You fled for Calatia in the dark of night like a common thief without even asking my leave. Did some statesman across the water teach you to speak gently, is that the way of it?"

_So that's the game she wants to play, is it?_ Link couldn't deny the change in subject left him ill at ease. So much had been lost between them in the past ten years; what good would come of telling her what he'd found? He told the tale anyway, just to lose himself in something. "The men across the water didn't teach me courtesy; I learned other things, though. The world only begins where Hyrule ends, Zelda. What wonders I saw! Men who lorded over fire and water, a moon pearl and a serpent's foot, temples to both old gods and new-"

"So you sold your sword to merchant princes in need of protection." Her voice was laden with disapproval, all traces of kindliness gone. "You might as well say it plainly. I have heard it said that men who sell their swords are without honor..."

"You seem to know better than anyone else that the gods gave me courage. That's not exactly the same thing as honor. Besides, the things I did across the water were no worse than what I did in another life. For you."

Zelda flinched as though he had hit her. "Don't you _dare_ throw that in my face! What we did...what we _both_ did...we did for the gods, not each other. But I suppose I deserved that..."

"No, you didn't," Link said, suddenly contrite. "And neither of us deserved what the gods gave us. I believe that more than I believe anything. I still dream of Ganondorf some nights."

"Me as well." Zelda turned sharply and went to the window, as if to hide some emotion she couldn't mask. "But it's better to have dreams of the man than to face the man himself, and all that happened many years ago. The foe we face now isn't half so evil, but he may kill us all the same."

Link was never sure what made him move: the way Zelda looked as she stood by that window, simple curiosity, or a desire to pursue the longing he'd seen in her eyes earlier. It didn't matter. One moment he was sitting and in the next he was standing, and coming to her. The smell of rot was stronger by that window, as if the balmy wind seeping into the room brought with it the stench of death. _And perhaps it does._

The castle grounds below were all mud, a chaos of privy trenches, grand pavilions, and men-at-arms drilling. For a while the two of them watched the soldiers as they were put through their paces, letting the comfortable silence stretch. Finally Link found it in him to speak. "You don't think Pollard is evil, then?" It was an odd opinion for Zelda to have about an enemy; he knew her to be a woman of absolutes, or thought he had.

"Of course not. I danced with the man at my wedding feast, and talked to him when he came to pledge his fealty, and he's my husband's brother besides. He overreaches himself, however. Ganondorf was no different, which is why he ended the way he did. We ought to hope that Lord Emery ends the same."

Her husband again. Link wanted to ask her if the well-wishes he'd given her while kissing her fingers had come to pass, if she'd found happiness in her marriage, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "Maybe not exactly the same," he said in a feeble attempt at gallows humor. "I grow weary of epic battles."

Zelda did not smile, only looked out on the besiegers once more. Link knew what she was seeing: the yellow warhorn flapping in the breeze, the oak tree flying high, the blue dragon and the three crowns, as many different banners as a man could count and more. All the strength of the south. "I find I have grown weary as well," she said faintly. "I suppose I shall nap a while; you should do the same."

"As you say, Zelda. Now, may I go? By your leave?"

The queen turned and looked at him. For the first time since he'd come to stand beside her at the window he realized how close they were - such a petty thing to concentrate on, yet important to him all the same. Her long maidenly hair, the stale sweat clinging to her like perfume, the sharpness in her eyes - no, that last part wasn't right... "You do not have my leave," Zelda said in a hard voice, breaking his illusion. "First I will know how you mean to champion my cause."

Link had almost forgotten she'd thought him a champion the night they met again - or perhaps he'd willed himself to forget. _She does not know,_ he thought. _She does not know she had me in her dungeon._ And then: _She must never know._ "You'll know the moment I do," he told her. "First I must plan. _Then_ comes the championing."

"Ah, of course." Zelda's voice was hard - but mingled with some softer emotion too. "I am but a woman, what would I know of such things? Go, Link, and see about planning your _championing_." She waved a hand at him, dismissive and curt. "_Go_."

Clearly, the conversation was over. Link nodded and turned to go. He should have kept going, but instead he turned around to face the queen one last time. "Zelda...how have _you_ spent the past ten years?"

Zelda looked over at him, giving him a good look at her ugly face. A sudden sadness crept into her eyes, surprising and uncharacteristic. "That's a darker story than I care to tell today. Night is falling fast enough without me aiding it. Now, _go_. Before you make me wroth."

He went. The bastard was still guarding the door, looking bored and miserable, but he was dutiful enough to give Link a sneer as he emerged. "Leaving so soon, turncloak?"

"It seems so, bastard." Link studied the man for a moment before he started walking again. _There's nothing in the bastard but spite and hate_, he thought as he walked. _Is that how it always is with him? Is that how I will end someday - just some bitter man scowling at imagined slights, for ever and ever?_

But once he put the bastard behind him, he had to smile despite everything. Their talk had been tense, and he wasn't fool enough to believe their problems were behind them...but Zelda had helped him forget about how desperate their situation was, at least for a little while. It was as if they had been talking on some yesterday ten years past, when marriage was still a suspicious stranger to them. _And the way she kept looking at me..._ That was an unworthy thought, but pleasing all the same.

_And the way she kept looking at me... _The longing, the contempt, the sadness. What an _idiot _he had been to ask how the last ten years had been for her, like just one of her sweet fools. _She's besieged, poxy, and married to a cousin, I wonder how the last ten years have been for her._

And then there was the other matter, the one that didn't bear thinking about. _She wants me to be her champion._ Did that mean he must crown her the Queen of Love and Beauty? There was little hope for victory; he'd seen that clear enough, once the old lordling pointed it out. But Link knew that if Zelda stayed as stubborn as she was, he'd have to either find a way for the Crown to emerge victorious or die when Pollard's forces stormed the castle. There was no in-between, not with Zelda.

Old habits die hard, and it took Link a while to realize he was going down to the castle's great hall. His hunger was a fierce thing and he didn't turn back, though that would have been the wise thing to do. The madness was on him to swallow enough food to ease the aching in his middle, and enough water to wet his tongue.

But when he saw the garrison sitting at the trestle tables, he froze.

Link had never liked the great hall, but now it reeked of danger in a way it never had before. Dirty servants were bringing a few joints of meat, still dripping grease, to table; the ragged garrison men seemed enlivened by the smell of cooked food, but Link could only wonder where the meat had come from. At one of the tables, men were arguing loudly about the size of their ration while others, blank-eyed, worried at onions black with rot. Orren lay beside the great hall's hearth raving and shivering by turns, but no one seemed to care. Link had still been chipping away at his tunnel when the castle doctor sawed off most of the soldier's crushed left leg and tried to cure the infection left behind with maggots and bread mold. It hadn't worked. Like as not, Orren would be dead before morning. They'd lost a lot of men to infection during the past year.

The great hall could feast a thousand, but it was barely half full. The siege had culled the weak and the cruel and the stupid from the garrison's ranks, leaving them a bare five hundred; that lordling who'd spoke so boldly would have been shocked to see it, but Link wasn't. It was still possible for him to turn back, even then, but Link's legs seemed to move without his permission deeper into the hall. Past his hunger, he felt the stares.

"Link!" He turned at the sound of the voice. It was Shepp who'd spoken, one of the men who'd been arguing with a commander about his ration. He was superb with the bow and very comely, but Link had never liked him. The young man had to holler the rest to be heard over the men who argued still. "Come down from your tower on high to sup with us, when you could have your pick of the queen's table?"

_I should leave. Now._ Link was about to do just that when, quiet as shadows, two garrison men sidled up next to him and guided him bodily to a seat on the bench near Shepp. The men had been his brothers once but now their faces were hard, unreadable. That was when he felt the steel edge of a sword against the back of his neck, so he didn't try to move or even speak.

An arguing man spared as glance for Link and the two men "guarding" him. "Come to get your crumb, _brother_?"

"No." That was Shepp. "Most like he just finished having high tea with Her Grace the queen. Just think about what they ate; she was setting food aside for herself months before the siege started, you know. Honey cakes. Pumpkin soup. Some cucco..." He wiped his mouth.

"No, brother, they probably supped on sausages. Thick juicy sausages. She likes those sorts of things, you can tell that just by looking at her, and they stay fresh for a long time..."

One of the maids, prettier than the others, was slapping the hands that groped at her as she passed out small pieces of stale bread. When she hit his, Shepp stared down at the hand as if he'd forgotten what it was. "Insolent bitch!" he raged. Cries of assent rose with an alarming rapidity.

"That is _enough_," the commander - a man that Link did not know - said. "There is nothing that girl can do to increase the size of your rations. Nothing I can do about it, either. Now sit, eat, and keep the silence. That is an order!"

For a moment, Link dared to hope that the habit of obedience ran too deep for the garrison men to continue their folly. And for a moment, it seemed that this was the case. Shepp quieted and lowered his eyes while the maid remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere, and the other arguing men began to tear off chunks of charred meat to eat. Then two men started arguing over an unclaimed joint of meat, and they had their swords out so fast that Link doubted what was happening.

Their battle began. The two men thrust and parried, their swords meeting so quickly that Link soon lost count of the blows. Then one of them stumbled and the other plunged his sword deep in his guts, and twisted. Once the corpse had fallen the victor turned away and grabbed the nearest joint of meat he could find, devouring it with animalistic ferocity while the hungry men around him roared in outrage.

Feeling curiously apart, Link turned his eyes back to see how the commander was taking all of this; two men had him by the arms, and as he struggled to free himself, a third man crept up behind him and drew his sword. "You'll die for that," he told the feeding man. "The king will hang you in a crow cage from the ramparts, you-"

Link never saw who threw the dagger, but they must have had some practice with it; it buried itself in the commander's throat with startling accuracy. When Shepp pulled it loose blood sprayed from the wound in pulses, each one weaker than the last. The man who'd crept up behind the commander, brandishing his shortsword, set about decapitating him. Three vicious blows to the neck and the thing was done. "Bugger you and your orders," Shepp said then to the dead man's head, scowling.


	4. Chapter 4: Zelda

Wood had grown dear, and her loyal men had been forced to dismantle the traitors' beds for fuel. They arranged planks in a rectangle before the queen and piled the rest in the center. The stronger pieces of wood had gone into constructing a platform above the planks; then came the makeshift stakes, thin trunks of young trees tied securely to the platform. Zelda had watched the building impassively all night but now she turned away. "Bring forth the traitors," she commanded, her voice too loud in the predawn chill.

The traitors were brought forth. They were seven in all, naked save for the manacles and chain that tied them together, their manhoods flopping obscenely as they tripped and stumbled. _Let them stumble_, Zelda thought as she watched them, _let them be shamed._ They had shamed _her_ yesterday when word reached her of what they had done, when a few survivors laid the twenty dead men before her throne. She had looked on all their faces, and vowed not to forget even one.

One of the traitors, with a comely face and long dark curls, looked at her. "You will not hear us scream," he told her, his voice hard.

__

Yes I will. She turned to the guards that flanked her, her loyal men. "Silence the traitors' bleating," she commanded. "The sound of them offends me." Her guards moved forward, iron cudgels in hand, and took their weapons to them all. The traitors were silent after that.

Then the traitors were tied to the pyre, the chain between them clinking. They were dabbed with the queen's perfumes as well, strong-smelling oils that made their skin shine in the torchlight; her guards dumped the rest of her oil onto the planks. Zelda watched the rise and fall of the traitors' chests, watched the contempt in their eyes turn to fear. By the time the thing was done the sky was pink in the east, and true dawn was a bleeding line on the horizon that threw Lord Emery's camp into shifting shadow.

They were all here now: the servants and her guards, the garrison...and her lords. Zelda watched them too. Lord Tally was wearing a black tabard and a grave frown; pale as milk, Lord Ellison was trying to stifle a cough and failing; and Lord Alberik was watching her instead of the prisoners. _I must show no weakness_, she knew the moment the lordling averted his gaze. _Any one of them could betray me next..._

Grimly, she turned to face her duty.

"These seven cravens killed twenty good men, and injured forty others," she told her court, gesturing at the traitors where they were bound. "The Crown does not take such betrayals lightly. Behold the fate of traitors."

Silently, the guard to her right handed the torch to her. The flames writhed and jumped, the heat washing over her face. How light this torch seemed...but she knew the true weight of it. She prepared to say the words then, as Berent had taught them to her, and her royal father before him. "In the name of Berent Pollard, sovereign of the Hylian Kingdom, by the word of Zelda Pollard, his wife and queen, I do sentence you seven to death." She strode forward, and flung the torch into the pyre.

The oil caught fire first. Zelda drank in the smell of flowers and fruits for a moment, watching the flames move across the saturated wood with a startling quickness, till the pleasant scents were drowned out by the odor of burning wood. She watched as the first smoke appeared and escaped harmlessly up into the air; she watched as the flames grew and stretched, rising higher and higher. It was growing harder to bear the heat, harder to breathe, but Zelda scarce noticed her discomfort till two of her loyal men led her gently back to a comfortable distance.

Zelda watched them all, determined not to look away, as the fire swept over them: first the one with boils all over his nose, then the one who'd spit on her when she'd attempted to interrogate him, the insolent one with his long sensuous curls last of all. For a moment she forgot to breathe, wondering if they'd hold true to their pledge; then the first cry arose from the conflagration, a long moan full of agony, followed by what seemed a thousand others. The screams of the traitors seemed to intensify in Zelda's ears till they were all she could hear, their cries as cruel as curses. _Is this the sound of our kingdom falling?_

Then the sight of the traitors' burning flesh was lost to her, hidden behind the rising wall of flames, but she saw their shadows still. Behind her veil of tears, it seemed that their shapes were struggling, fighting to break free... The _smell_ of them reached her, no different from the scent of horsemeat fresh from the spit, from that of roast pork. Hunger gnawed at her and drool filled her mouth, so indescribably horrible that she fled from the execution and vomited over a rampart.

The traitors had fallen silent by the time the doctor reached her. Zelda stood to face him, wiping spit from around her mouth with one of her sleeves. He was still in his bloodstained robes, the emotion in his dark eyes hard to read. Without ever asking her leave he laid a hand on her shoulder, applying just enough pressure to help her keep her feet. "Is it the wound troubling you, Your Grace? Or is there something else..."

"I-" How could she tell him with all her court watching? Zelda averted her gaze. "The smell, it..."

"I understand. A man will smell like that when he's burning, for a while at least. It's easy to find the smell unpleasant." He paused. "If I may ask, _why_ didn't you throw the traitors into a cell until you had need of them? The two on the end looked especially healthy...very lean. In a few moon's turns, you might be glad for some fresh meat."

For all she said of outlasting Lord Emery, such talk as this frightened the queen, and fear made her angry. "I will not suffer to sup on a traitor's flesh, _doctor_," she said sharply. _And if you tell it true, I'm not like to live for a few more moon's turns. I must deliver justice while I can._ "The next time I require your counsel I shall ask for it. Wait here and hold your tongue while I make an end to this. I would pay my respects to the injured."

She left the doctor gaping and turned back to face her court, skirts swirling as she walked toward them. She'd chosen good black wool to wear today, an appropriate choice that served her purpose. The fire still burned when she stopped and stood before the pyre, but it was their queen the court was watching. Zelda looked out on them, studying the sparse aristocratic faces of her lords and the blank expressions on the faces of the garrison men, wondering what she could say to ensure their continued loyalty.

"Lord Pollard laid siege on my castle near a year ago," she reminded them. "You stayed to defend the Crown for honor, for gold, for love. In return for your service, you expected your liege lord and lady to give you protection. But I cannot promise you safety, or your life, or that you'll ever return home; these traitors ended thinking that I could. Would that I could, but war makes beggars of us all. I _can_ promise you that you will know more hardship and pain than you ever have...but I can also promise you justice. I will see Lord Pollard and all traitors like him dead. There is no justice without sacrifice, and you must look to your gods to know what you'll have to suffer. I know I have."

One man reached a hand up to pick his nose, but that was all. She might have been all alone on the roof for all the noise her court made. _No more than I expected_, she realized wearily. _It's me they hear, but it's my husband they want. I've hidden myself away too long for them to love me now._

When the pyre had grown cool enough to approach, two of her guards donned padded mitts and searched for the traitors' remains; Zelda had decreed their bones would be flung over the castle walls once they were burned to death. But what her guards brought forth from the ruins was nothing like what she expected._ It was just_, she had to tell herself when she saw the burnt corpses. _I did it for the men they killed._ _Justice is justice, no matter what form it takes._

She bade her court watch as the remnants of the traitors were thrown over the ramparts, then dismissed them. For a moment she watched as the ragged men departed, worried by how few they seemed, then spun on a heel and went back to the doctor. The sun was high in the sky now, the day close to afternoon. "You know the way from here?" Zelda asked the doctor at last, her voice soft and precise. The sleepless night she'd spent watching her guards build the pyre was making itself felt, and she wanted to be done with this next piece of business before moonrise.

"Yes, Your Grace."

Once they were alone on the roof they descended the ladder, the doctor climbing down first so that he might catch Zelda if she fell. Annoyed by the very threat of coddling Zelda forced herself to make the descent slowly, not wanting to fall into the arms of the man waiting below her. Her arms were shaking and the wound beneath her clothes was aching by the time her feet touched the floor. Once the queen had straightened her skirts, the doctor led her forth to where the wounded and dying were being housed.

At Zelda's insistence, the castle's great hall had been given over to the wounded. The doctor thought it unwise to move the garrison men any more than was necessary, and in the great hall a man was never far from fire, food, and comfort. The latter two had grown dear in the past year, and Zelda was unwilling to lose any more men to death than she had to. When she entered the great hall now, she was pleased to see that the trestle tables had been pushed back, the injured men reclined on makeshift beds, and torches burned in every sconce while large fires roared in the hearths.

The doctor looked at her dubiously as he removed a wineskin from his voluminous robes. He must have thought she would turn back by now, but she was determined to prove his assumptions wrong. "Now...are you sure this is wise, Your Grace? With your wound, perhaps you should-"

"Nonsense. Nothing was ever wiser."

Zelda quickly learned the doctor - usually as timid as a mouse - was a different man when treating sickness. He set her to boiling wine while he poked and prodded at the men, sniffing closed wounds and sewing up reopened ones best he could. It quickly became Zelda's job to pour the boiling wine over the men's wounds to burn out infection. Once she burnt herself so badly blisters appeared on one of her hands in half a heartbeat, but she dug the fingers of her other hand into her thigh so she scarcely felt it.

The two of them slowly made their way around the room, trying to repair the damage that had been done by the traitors yesterday. Zelda tried to provide comfort where she could. She murmured meaningless courtesies to the raving and wiped sweat from the brows of the fevered, engaging in small talk with those who were aware to take their minds off their dire predicament. She enjoyed the work...but both dreaded and anticipated its end. For once she was done with the majority of her duties, she might chance to see _him_, Link. They had talked yesterday. He'd made her feel giddy as a girl - and as frustrated. Like as not, he didn't realize the effect he had on her; he never had, and her marriage seemed to have just made him worse.

He was by one of the fires, eyes closed, his face drawn and pinched with pain. When she and the doctor kneeled beside him Zelda took note of the sweat on his brow, the pallor of his skin...the naked flesh peeping out from beneath his thin coverlet. _You great blond fool, what have you done?_ "I should like to care for this one myself," she told the doctor.

The man protested for a moment, till he remembered who she was. He relented then, but vowed to supervise her closely, and to pull her away if he thought she might kill him. "I'll try not to harm him." She'd meant for the comment to sound mild, but it came out breathy. That was frightening. What was happening to her?

The doctor pulled back the coverlet, baring Link to the waist. It was then that Zelda realized why he was here with these other fevered, injured men. Someone had tried to take his sword arm off at the shoulder; the vicious cut there was swathed in dirty silk, but she could see how red the area was around it. A long line of stitching ran diagonally from navel to the bottom of his right nipple. The sight of his wounds made her furious all over again, made her wish she could relive the execution of that morning. Then she remembered the smell of the traitors' burning flesh, and forcefully calmed herself.

At the doctor's prompting she bent over Link's sleeping form to sniff at and feel the skin around his wounds. His skin was surprisingly soft beneath her fingers, and it was the stitched wound that smelled strange to her.

Zelda looked up at the doctor. "Some boiling wine, I think. My own, with the magic powder."

The doctor made a small sound of assent and moved away to find her wineskin. Alone with Link, Zelda concentrated on her task. She reached for the silk, preparing to unbind and clean the wound...

...and Link opened his eyes. "Zelda," he said, staring at her. His voice was faint, papery. "I fear I'm in no condition to receive you."

She could feel some emotion, long latent, stirring within her. Ill at ease, she groped for her anger again and found it. "And no wonder," she said hotly. "They had you seven-to-one, Link...what did you _think_ was going to happen? They killed twenty men between them." Her voice had changed, though she never told it to. It was softer now, less indignant. "You might have been among them. When I heard...that was what I feared most."

"That _I_ might die?"

That gave her pause. Zelda averted her eyes, but that didn't make her sudden discomfit go away; nor did it make her heartfelt words any less true. "Of course. Who else?"

"Your husband, for one. Did he make a gift of that gown to you?

"My husband was in no danger, and as it happens, he _did_ give this to me as a gift. I remember what you said of silk and samite. How do you like this wool?"

"I don't. Black is not a happy color on you."

Before Zelda could think of a reply, the doctor returned with a kettle full of boiling wine infused with magic powder. The powder was strong stuff; its odor clung to the back of her throat, and didn't please Link much either, judging from the way he wrinkled his nose. Zelda gave a cursory glance at the kettle's contents, then looked up at the doctor. "Thank you for your kindness. Leave me now. I can handle the rest myself."

The doctor's mouth fell open, and there was disbelief in his eyes, but obedience won out. Zelda watched him expectantly as he warned her to be careful and took his leave of her, leaving her in the great hall all alone with these wounded and dying men...and Link.

Link was watching the kettle, she realized, the look in his eyes halfway between disbelief and fear. "You're going to pour that wine over me," he said.

"That's the idea."

"Please don't," he begged. "I don't fancy the idea of being burned. Just stay here and talk with me a while, and tell that doctor you tortured me sufficiently when he asks you later."

But Zelda was losing herself to infection, and she didn't like the idea of letting Link's wounds fester. She was about to insist on treating him when Link, made clumsy by his wounds and bandages, reached out and took her by her uninjured hand, guiding her closer. "All right," she relented, strangely flustered at his touch. "But if the doctor treats you on the morrow and finds pus under that dressing, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Don't trouble yourself about that. I will tell the doctor how gently you treated me, and that you spoke to me with such kindness."

"As you say." Zelda looked Link over. His face was thin and wasted, and she fancied she could see his ribs, but... "You look surprisingly well, considering what happened here yesterday."

"Yesterday was a skirmish, nothing more."

"Yesterday seven garrison men killed twenty and injured forty," Zelda argued stubbornly. "Ten of those injured are like to die before the day is done. That doesn't seem a _skirmish_ to me."

"Did it make you sad, the killing?"

That made her smile. "Link, you know me better. I'm no maiden girl, to weep at the sight of blood. I know what war looks like as well as you...mostly, it made me angry."

"You _were_ a maiden girl, last I saw you, but fair enough. I fear I've been too long away to sense your moods."

__

This is not the Link I talked to yesterday, Zelda realized with a start of fear. His voice was so gentle now, as open and welcoming as his expression. And his eyes...they were as pale a blue as hers, and just now shining with warmth...and hunger. Had his brush with death changed him, warped his emotions? Discomfited by his stare, Zelda dropped her gaze.

Her eyes landed on his chest. It was not the fresh wounds she looked upon, but the old, the scars she had wondered about when he'd been the Hero of Time. His torso was crisscrossed with scars both short and long, some shiny and obviously gotten in Calatia, others ragged and old, twisted with time travel. She could imagine each of the scars as they had been as open wounds, copiously weeping blood. _He has endured so much..._

Link's eyes followed her gaze. "So you see my scars at last," he said softly. "Do they please you?"

The frank question made her blush. _Giddy as a girl_, she thought bitterly, _when you'll be thirty in six moon's turns._ Then some other emotion rose over her embarrassment, some want. "I..." she started. What would he think of her if she said the rest? "May I touch them?"

"If it please you." He was staring at her intently, the heat of the dying torches reflected in his eyes.

Zelda froze for a moment, her last resistance, then did as he coaxed her. Her good hand hovered over Link's chest and finally lowered. She touched the scars lightly at first, then harder, as the heat of his skin warmed hers. The newer scars were soft, the older ones rough and raised. She found an especially long one and lingered there, her fingers skating back and forth across it. "How badly did this one hurt?"

"Fiercely."

Her mouth felt so dry she could scarcely speak the words. "The pox...it hurt too. Not at first, not truly, but after..."

"Every one of my scars is an honor, but it is said that a woman's honor is different from a man's. _Your_ scars..." He touched them tentatively, his right thumb brushing over the back of her hand.

__

I never gave you leave to touch me. She wanted to say the words, she _wanted_ to, but they would not come. Instead the smallest sound escaped her, so low and weak that Link couldn't have heard it, and she did not pull her hand away. "My scars are my shame," she admitted, "or so my councilors would have me believe. Men will never again look on me with any great yearning, or..."

"Hmm..." Link didn't appear to be listening, distracted by his task. His hand moved over hers, started to move up her arm.

"Your scars," Zelda continued. How hard it was to speak, to concentrate, with Link touching her. "Your scars proclaim your courage...your finesse...your..."

He didn't answer her. His hand dropped and for a moment Zelda was relieved, till it slid up her wide floppy sleeve, ticking her thick forearm. She felt as though no one had ever touched her arm before, as if the heat radiating from Link's palm was cooking her alive. Their eyes met and Zelda wondered what Link saw in hers, because his hand was moving upward with increased urgency...

__

My vows. She remembered the temple where she'd said them, the sweet ache in her knees that came from kneeling beside her feeble bridegroom, how when she'd hesitated the gods seemed to be watching, _waiting_... She remembered how Berent had looked at her when her gown fell away from her body for the first time, the look full of hurt Link had given her when she told him of her betrothal. Then she couldn't see either of them anymore, not even _him_, because the torches were guttering and the fire was down to embers. Sorrow filled her, sudden and powerful, and she pulled her hand away.

"Zelda..." His eyes met hers. He must have seen the tears in them because he froze. "If I have given offense-"

"You haven't." _If truth be told, you've pleased me. Too much so._ "But...that was ill done. What would my husband say if he knew what happened here?"

"I don't know." His voice was so soft, hardly a whisper "Are you like to tell him and find out?"

"I..." Was she? _Was_ she? Her heart was beating fiercely now, Zelda realized, and her arm still tingled where Link had touched her. But she lowered her eyes and said, "I am a woman wed..."

"You're a woman wed," Link repeated. That might have been regret Zelda heard in his voice, but in the dimness it was hard to say. And then her hand moved, ghosting over his bare torso before she found his own hand flung carelessly over his stomach. They stayed like that a moment, her hand resting comfortably over his, before their fingers twined together.


	5. Chapter 5: Interlude

The way to Lord Emery Pollard's pavilion wound around the privy trenches, beyond the budding cookfires, and down the path marked off on both sides by banners that rose from the ground like weeds. With a thousand men between here and there, the trek was usually a slow one, and the afternoon's rains had left the grounds muddy as well as crowded. _I shouldn't have worn these boots_, Emmen thought, looking down at them gloomily. They were good supple leather, bought with the rupees he'd claimed as prize at the last melee he'd won, and just now splattered with water, mud, and something that looked suspiciously like shit. _It probably _is_ shit, like as not; we've been here long enough. That would be just my luck._

Dusk had fallen, turning the sky purple and the ground treacherous. Lord Emery's camp sprawled out for miles between where the castle town ended and the castle moat begun; it was easy to lose himself, and Emmen did. All around him, the inhabitants of the camp continued their everyday routines. Bright as stars, torches and nightfires bloomed all around him, bringing with them the smell of smoke and cooking meat. Unseen men sang songs of victory and the hunt, their voices rising amongst the great pavilions and lowly tents. Nearby, a man was juggling half a dozen knives to the delight of some homely camp followers and drunken men-at-arms. Well away from others, two archers were attempting to outshoot each other at fifty paces.

Emmen felt the stares, heard a few ragged cries of "milord" and toasts to the young lord of Rourke. The attention made him feel glad, despite the fate his fine boots were consigned to; it was easy to feel alone in a host forty thousand strong, but his birth had spared him that. _And so much else as well._

Twenty-one and comely, Emmen Rourke had been born heir to rich lands south of Lake Hylia, a storied keep...and all the crofter's daughters he could ever want. Emery Pollard _himself _had given Emmen his spurs at sixteen, for acts of valor in a small skirmish with Calatians on Hyrule's southern border. Knighthood had only increased the arrogance and vanity that came along with being tall and strong and handsome; it didn't help that, over the past five years, he'd grown into a tourney knight of some repute. Three years ago he'd even been champion at a tourney held on these very grounds in honor of Queen Zelda's name day. How right the world had seemed the moment he'd unhorsed his last opponent, one of the king's sworn swords; how shy and sweet the beautiful young queen's smile had been when he gave her the Queen of Love and Beauty's laurel. How he'd dreamed of stealing the queen from the king and taking her across the sea to make a kingdom of his own; how the singers would love him...

...and then his lord father died.

Truth be told, Emmen had never liked his father, the Lord Myron Rourke; the older servants in the castle whispered that when Emmen's mother died in childbed, the joy had seeped out of the old man, leaving only rage and bitterness. Emmen could well believe it. He wanted to joust and hunt and wench; his father wanted to sit in his solar and brood on all the slights he'd suffered, especially those injustices done him by the Pollards. His death had come almost as a relief; at least, Emmen reflected when he heard the grim news, he'd never again have to hear his father prattle on in that gloomy tone of his about some bog the Pollards had seized.

His father's death presented certain complications for Emmen, so the young man couldn't enjoy his mourning like he wanted. As the only child his lady mother had seen fit to give his father, he stood to inherit the Rourkes' seat of Thirdcrown. Apparently, the founder of House Rourke, some hedge knight in service to the king, had known the queen of the time a deal better than he should have. The queen loved him so well she'd given him three crowns, that he might make a seat of his own in the rich South. The hedge knight gave a crown to each of his sons, and used the third to build his seat. House Rourke had borne the queen's three crowns on their banners ever since.

Well, those crowns must have been pitiful paltry things. Thirdcrown Castle was a poorly built heap of stone that froze in winter and reeked perpetually of mildew, dogs' urine, and the stink of the nearby bogs. Despite all the fabled fertility of the South, Thirdcrown was hedged on three sides with the swamps that belonged to House Pollard; the forest on the fourth side was filled with fat brown rabbits, rare animals that helped swell the family coffers, and little else. Nevertheless, Emmen was declared Lord of Thirdcrown at nineteen, in sight of the Door of Time and the old king to whom he'd been made to pledge fealty, with all the lands and incomes that came alone with the title.

Lordship presented Emmen with a series of amusements. He had all the crofter's daughters he wanted, to be sure...but aside from their maidenhoods, there was nothing else to be gained from the poxy slatterns. And as the young Lord of Thirdcrown he had no lack of marriage offers...but truth be told, he'd sooner have a nice whore than any of the pimply young maidens that had been paraded before him prior to the war.

Ah, yes...the war.

Emmen was Emery Pollard's cousin as well as one of his lords bannermen. They shared a taste for good food and wenching, and even their names sounded alike...but Emmen had never trusted him. Living at Thirdcrown with his father and his father's ghosts had taught him that only his immediate family members could be trusted, and them not very far.

Yet, when Emery called his banners to go to war against his brother Berent and the queen, Emmen answered his summons. He came to the aid of House Pollard with all his strength mostly to kick his dead father in the mouth...but also because he still harbored thoughts of stealing the queen and taking her with him across the water once the battle was done. He remembered, faintly, how he'd tried to convince Emery to spare the queen as they talked of storming Hyrule Castle over a game of tiles. It had been spring then, and Emery's temper had not been quite so short.

"They need not all be killed, coz. The queen..."

"The queen has been married for ten years, and she's _still_ barren. Berent shuns her bed; they say he prefers common strumpets. Like brother like brother, eh?" They'd shared the laugh and Emery won the game of tiles, which ended all talk of sparing the queen.

It was summer when they finally marched against Hyrule Castle with all the strength of the south. The Crown countered with the power of houses like Morley, which could field three thousand swords at best. The battle had passed as a dream for Emmen, who covered himself in glory by commanding the van while Emery commanded from the rear. The day seemed almost won, and then...then Hyrule Castle lowered its portcullis, drew up its drawbridge, and from the parapets the king dared the South to lay siege while his garrison threw down dung and cheered.

He'd found no pleasure in this bloody siege, not even in the camp follower who made him smile in the night. Emmen was young, and tired of this waiting; he wanted to _kill_ something. Instead, he'd been reduced to a _messenger bird_, slogging through the mud in his good boots to wait his lord cousin's pleasure.

He was nearly past the banners now; night had turned them black as rot. Unconsciously, one of Emmen's hands slid inside his doublet, where the folded parchment was hidden safe and dry. _Messenger bird or no, I must do this_, he knew. _I have the bird, I have the letter, and soon Cousin Emery will have the truth..._

A monstrous vision of scarlet silk, Emery's pavilion loomed before him. Before the entrance to the pavilion, half a dozen watchmen in Pollard's livery stood sentry; they lowered their spears when they saw Emmen approaching and one of them called out a challenge. Giving them a good look at the three crowns on his pure white doublet, Emmen stopped before the guards and looked down at them, putting his height to good use. "Out of my way, or you'll learn _who goes there_," he growled, and they moved aside.

Bigger than the great hall at Thirdcrown, the pavilion contained everything a lord could need and more: a feather bed covered with shaggy furs, chests overflowing with clothing, a polished table stocked with writing quill, inkpot, and rolls of parchment and sheepskin, braziers for every corner and some besides, baskets filled with sweet-smelling rushes, bowls filled with ripe fruit, and flagons filled with dark sweet wine. Along one wall were enough weapons to stock an armory. _Who knew a man who owned naught but swampland could be so rich?_

Playing at tiles with a man-at-arms Emmen did not know was a man in a red jerkin and wool breeches dyed a soft yellow, the colors of his House. When Emmen entered he looked up quickly, then returned to his game. "I knew _you'd_ come, coz. You always seem to appear just when I'm about to win." When the man-at-arms cackled and pocketed a handful of silver rupees his gaming partner looked up for good, green eyes studying Emmen without the least hint of warmth.

Emery Pollard, Lord of the Misery Maze and Lord Paramount of the South, would have been considered nothing but common at royal court, Emmen knew; of middling height and build, he had a mouth full of crooked teeth and features so ordinary that it was hard to say how old he was. He had been born amongst the bogs of Misery Mire, a grim place that bred grim people. His lusterless brown hair had grown long as a maid's, spilling straight and fine across his shoulders and down his back; his catlike green eyes, common among the lords who ruled south of Lake Hylia, did not smile when his mouth did. Men were quick to call Emery cold, but he was ambitious, in truth; Emmen had discovered that quickly. The third son of Lord Collin Pollard and Lady Elyn, by rights he should have gone on to rule some swampy holdfast in his lordly brother's name...but the gods had a different plan for him. When he was twenty, his oldest brother Berent married the Princess Zelda, and the title of Lord Pollard passed to the second son, Derren. But Derren soon died strangely in a hunting accident, and by twenty-five Emery had it all: ownership of a large chunk of the South, political power, and the promise of a good marriage. Now he was thirty, and still he sought to climb.

"You always thought I was _good_ luck before," Emmen said lightly. He picked a pear from a bowl and bit into it, not caring in the least about his impropriety. The juices exploded in his mouth, tart and perfect.

"When we played at forfeits in the brothels, you mean?" Emery laughed. "Well, you always were good at getting the girls out of their clothes. But that is no subject fit for my lady wife's ears, and I'm sure my man is anxious to piss away his fortune in a game of tiles elsewhere. You may leave us, Grenn." His voice turned tender as he turned his attention to his wife. He beckoned her closer with a hand. "My lady..."

Garbed in smoky silk, Lady Pollard sat in a rocking chair with her sewing in her lap. _Mira_ her husband called her, since he couldn't pronounce her true name, and it seemed to serve. She'd been a virgin princess when Emery found her across the water, the youngest daughter of a king with too many heirs. To hear the servants tell it, she was still a virgin. _If he doesn't want that sweet little thing he could give her to me_, Emmen thought, eyeing her. _I could show him how it's done._ Sure, she was all of fourteen and every week seemed to have a fresh crop of pimples that she was inclined to pick at till they bled, but cousins lent each other helping hands when they needed them.

Abandoning her sewing, Lady Pollard crept timidly toward her husband and yielded to the embrace he gave her when he rose. "Leave us, child," he commanded, silencing any protest she might have made with a lingering kiss. When their kiss broke, he spoke again, though it was doubtful she understood a word her lord husband said. "Fetch a servant and get them to bring me supper. A nicely crisped capon, I think. And a flagon of iced milk, the day has been hot."

Emmen couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Is that wise, Cousin? I've heard a few of your lords complaining that we're eating the land bare..."

Emery didn't want to hear it. "Of course it's wise," he said, giving his cousin a cool look as his wife shuffled meekly out. "I know no surer way of working up hunger than by talking to _you_."

Soon they were alone, and here came the part he dreaded. Emmen liked jousting well enough but he hated controversy, this dueling with words. Nevertheless, he pulled the parchment free of his doublet and held it stiffly out to his cousin. "You know I wouldn't interrupt you at your tiles unless it was a matter of import. A bird delivered this letter to my pavilion this morning. I think you should read it."

Emery had been pouring himself a cup of wine but he stopped to come retrieve the letter. His bright green eyes squinted with suspicion as he studied the broken wax seal. "Queer," he muttered as he picked up his cup. "I cannot make out the sigil, but it seems to me I know these colors." He unfolded the letter and started to read, bringing the cup to his lips. He took one sip and flung the cup away with all his strength. It disturbed a basket of rushes as it fell, wine and slender reeds spraying in all directions as the cup landed against the floor with a tinkling glass crash. "Damn that pox-ridden bitch," he growled, red-faced. "_Damn her!_"

Once, his cousin's temper might have made Emmen cringe; once, he might have fled until Emery's fit of rage had cooled. But he was made of sterner stuff now, and all he did was blink. "We ignored the whispers for far too long," he reminded the angry lord. "They said she was gathering swords around her...that men were slipping south of Lake Hylia in numbers greater than before..."

"_I don't care what our scouts said!_" Emery started pacing, in an attempt to calm himself. The parchment was already balled up in one of his hands, Emmen noted. "How long has she been free?"

They were discussing Lady Morley, of course. Not Emery's lady mother, who'd been a Morley before Lord Collin married her, but the new one. She and her lord husband were Morleys both, distant cousins hastily wed. Her husband had been cut down in the battle before the siege, but the Morleys had always been ardent supporters of the Crown, and Emery wanted to take no chances of being cut down himself when his star was rising. As she was traveling back to her husband's keep several knights sworn to House Pollard ambushed her and her modest honor guard, marching her south to a "comfortable" captivity at the dread Misery Maze till the war was won. And now, after nearly a year, she'd found her way out of the labyrinth.

"The letter does not say," Emmen admitted, "but our scouts have learned the truth. Knights and spearmen left behind to garrison the Stony Stream have been marshaling their strength for an attack on the Mire to free their lady. They started to march during the last moon's turn, unbeknownst to us. You left Misery Maze lightly garrisoned, and when your guards heard about the host marching on them, they abandoned the castle almost to a man. Those that were foolish enough to stay were put to the sword when Morley's men stormed the keep and freed our captives."

"Bloody cowards." Emery slammed a fist down on his game board, making the tiles jump. "I'll have their heads. Every one."

"You left thirty gaolers to guard a hundred highborn captives. What did you expect? I told you, we should have kept Lady Morley close, as you kept your lady wife close. I could have insured her loyalty by wedding her." It was not something Emmen would have minded. He'd seen Della Morley once, and she was too beautiful by half: with long dark hair that fell in loose curls around a face so comely it would have melted even Emery's frozen heart, she was high-breasted, slender, long legged, and ripe for bedding. He would have been pleased by a marriage to such a woman...only now she was marching north clad in chainmail, with swords all around her. It was a shame.

His cousin snorted. "Insured she'd slit your throat, you mean. Even if she didn't, I'd never be able to get you away from her. But no more about what might have been. She's free now. This letter..." He glared down darkly at the crinkled parchment, as though it had committed some crime. "I like it not at all."

"She says she's amassed a huge host. That she means to besiege us besiegers, if we do not meet her terms. Her terms are generous, she says..."

"_I know what she says!_ Do you think I am some fool, that I cannot read the words behind her words? When she says she's _amassed a huge host_, what it means is that she's conscripted every cowherd and crofter she could find and armed them with spears. I've no doubt that I could deploy half of my horse to deal with her _mighty_ host, if it should come to battle between us. What concerns me is the letter itself. She writes surprisingly well for someone fresh from the Maze, and she seems to like writing, judging from the length of this bloody letter. You are not the only one who received a letter, Emmen, I promise you. If word of this should reach the castle..."

That would mean blood, Emmen knew; he was not foolish enough to deny that. "They will never know of Lady Morley's march," he said confidently. "I have archers ready to strike down any bird that comes within a league of the castle."

"But?" Emery was frowning.

_It's hardly an appropriate question. But Emery's seen me at worse._ "You..." Emmen hesitated, wondering. "It would gladden my heart, coz, if you told me why this siege is so important. The men would like to know as well. You've never told me, and, well, since you will not accept Lady Morley's terms..." He knew he wouldn't by now.

Something cold bloomed in Emery's lovely eyes. "I've never told you my reasons, that's true enough. Nor will I. Leave it be, for the love you say you bear me." He sat down before his tiles again, grabbed a nearby cup, and poured himself more wine. "A hundred highborn captives freed. A shame. They could have been powerful inducements to get their Houses to support me when I come into my power. Could have been. Everything I do seems to turn to dross in my hands. This siege, this with the freeing of those captives, Della's march...my father tried to warn me, but I would not listen. My father was a cold man, Emmen, _cold_. He died when I was ten, but I knew how he was. And I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm turning into him." He took a long drink.

_My father was hot enough for the both of you._ Emmen held his silence, hoping that Emery would say more about his father, but he never did. "You say you have your archers on the lookout for birds," Emery said finally, sounding less somber. "But there are other ways to get word into a castle..."

"Not that I know. Hyrule Castle is locked up tighter than a maiden after dark."

"Very droll. Berent told me a droll story the last time I came to pledge my fealty, a notable achievement for a gouty dullard like him. When the castle was full of suitors begging leave to take Princess Zelda's hand, a thief tried to enter undetected. Perhaps he wanted to steal her crown or her maidenhead, who can say? Well, this thief entered the castle through its sewers, a poor way to go undetected if you ask me, but he never did. He just dived into the moat, pulled off a grate and climbed in. Hyrule Castle shits into its moat, you know. One day after my brother's royal marriage, some diligent servant was cleaning the cellars and pulled up a grate. He found the thief's bones, well cleaned." Emery laughed. "Easier going out than in, they say, but we ought to take no chances. I want guards posted by the moat, in case Lady Morley tries to tempt some hedge knight short of coin."

"As you say, Emery." Emmen did not like to think on what would become of the man stupid enough to try to enter Hyrule Castle through its sewers. Last week eleven men had been thrown from the castle walls. They were half-starved, unwashed...and quite alive when Emery started to question them. He did most of the "questioning" himself, Emmen heard, watching cold-eyed while the soldiers writhed and screamed and bled beneath him.

"The Hyrules besieged this castle once, before they were kings and when this castle was known by another name," Emmen's cousin was saying. "It took them four years to force the inhabitants to yield. I would gladly do the same as the Hyrules did three thousand years ago, but I don't have four years." He turned sharply away. "We _must_ be done with them before Lady Morley's force arrives. The trebuchet has not been built that can breach Hyrule Castle's walls, storming the castle is too chancy, and I mislike the thought of offering peace. She's given us a moon's turn to consider her terms, for which I'm duly grateful. We'll make the most of it, I'm sure, and then we'll smash her host to bloody bits. I may even consent to sharing the fair Lady Della and the pretty queen with you once the battle is done, as we often shared wenches down in the Mire. Won't that be pleasant? You and I, we do love our cousins." Emery Pollard stood, the heat in his eyes making them sparkle like emeralds. "First, though...we _must _draw the castle out."

_How?_ Emmen might have asked, but by then he knew.


	6. Chapter 6: Zelda

Well, here it is--a chapter with all the fluff and love you've all been waiting for. Okay, not really, but there's always hope, right? By the way, sorry for the long hiatus, but I had a horrible case of writer's block, on top of the end of my senior year slapping me in the face. But I'm actually back to making progress now, so that's good, right?

Anyway, enjoy!

****

Update (6/22/05): Re-uploaded this to fix some QuickEdit-produced errors. So if you've already read this (yeah, all two of you), I didn't tack on a steamy LZ scene to the end or anything like that.

&

Zelda refused to wait on Lord Tally. "Lord Emery's treason is vile enough...but to be betrayed by _you_, after so long? I will not bear it. Should I have you thrown from the ramparts like some unruly garrison man?"

Old Lord Ellison seemed less timid today; perhaps the cloak speckled with Octoroks wrapped around his thin, trembling body had given him courage. "No. You should swallow your foolish pride, lower the drawbridge, and parley with Lord Pollard. As you will not, however, at least allow those of us with enough sense to accept this proposal to..."

"_Sense_?" Her anger flared. "_I_ name it treason. What else do you call it, when you plot to forsake your rightful king and treat with traitors?"

"Sense," Ellison repeated stubbornly. "If I'm consigned to a dungeon cell till you yield because I dare speak the truth, then so be it; I will bear the punishment gladly. This siege has been folly from the start, I've said that much, and the sooner it's over the better for all of us involved. I have a wife and daughter I haven't seen in over a year. I want to go home."

Laughter burst from the lips of Martyn Alberik, a handsome man with a trident sewn onto his breast. "Be careful what you wish for, Denys, or this council may grow smaller yet."

Zelda glanced coldly at Alberik before pushing her attack once more, heedless. "We must all suffer disappointments in this life..."

"_Enough_." Berent's soft voice had become a whip. "Are you all trained birds, to chirp in turns? I will have quiet." Almost as an afterthought he added, "Sit down, wife."

Her fury quelled a bit, Zelda took her seat at the foot of the council table and closed her eyes briefly. What was wrong with her? Her anger felt so painful, and her throat was sore all the time. _The infection,_ she reminded herself. Opening her eyes, she attempted to stop the beginnings of fear from growing within her by studying the features of the husband she'd known for the last ten years.

Berent had emerged from his week-long seclusion with the gods no worse for wear than he'd been when he entered it, but that was not all to the good. Hardly the most handsome of men, the king's inherent homeliness had only been compounded by the passage of years. Too close together, his eyes were the brown of his Morley mother rather than the startling green of the swamp lords, rheumy and never still; his nose was sharp, his brow high and pale, his small mouth petulant. A slender golden crown rested on his close-cropped white hair, drawing attention to his thin beardless face; his skin hung doughily from his bones, the main mark of his age. Now that he was sixty-six, Zelda could acknowledge she was married to a man who was old, done, and failing.

__

This is the husband my father gave me, for the rest of my life. She remembered his words still, could smell the sickly-sweet odor of his sickroom. "Berent's a good man," her father had said as she sat holding his hand. "Dutiful, intelligent, kind...he'll take care of you." The wasting illness had stolen his strength and his voice was hardly a whisper, but once she gave him her word he'd squeezed her hand, and all his characteristic fierceness had come rushing back. That old ferocity couldn't save him when his time came, though; she'd been with him when he died, two days after her marriage. Berent said he'd found her holding his hand still, unable to speak for her tears. _That_ she didn't remember at all.

Just now, Berent was staring at Lord Ellison in a half-bored, half-curious way. Zelda had learned it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like that. "My royal wife seems to be under the wrong impression, Denys. Tell her the tale, as you told it to me. Leave nothing out."

Irked though she was at Berent's coddling, Zelda held her silence and waited for Ellison to pick up the debate the nine of them had agonized over for an entire morning...whether they would sooner live or die.

Dying would be easier, Zelda knew. All they need do was ignore the letter, which still wanted to curl despite the efforts that had been taken to flatten it, and hide behind Hyrule Castle's walls to wait for the end to come. Their wait would not be long now, and the end would come as a welcome relief; Zelda imagined death would come upon them like some old friend instead of the suspicious stranger they'd thought it to be their whole lives. They would win immortality in songs for their efforts, and why not? They had tried valiantly and failed; they would die nobly, with their knees unbent...

Farore gave life and received death, just payment, but it seemed to Zelda that the price for one outweighed that of the other. Living would come hard, _hard_. To live for another moon's turn they would be forced to sacrifice honor and any vestiges of courage they had left within them. That price went against everything she had been taught, was more than Zelda cared to pay. But to accept death in its place, after so long...the fact that she was inwardly wavering between the two choices was enough to make her fight all the harder to bring about their deaths.

Ellison cleared his throat loudly, drawing Zelda out of her tumultuous thoughts. "I found the bird early this morning while I was walking the roof," he announced. He picked up the parchment from where Lord Burke had laid it down and scanned it idly. "I took it directly to His Grace, as I knew he would want. It turned out to be a letter from Della Morley, who has spent the past year in captivity at the Misery Maze. She and a hundred of Your Grace's lords bannermen are marching to our relief with all their strength. Two weeks from now, her host will arrive; she's already distracted Lord Emery by telling him he has a moon's turn to agree to terms she's delivered to him via one of his lords bannermen, but her plan necessitates our inviting Pollard to parley the morning of her arrival. She says she will be the hammer and our parley the anvil. She--"

"That's enough, Denys." Berent held up one of his gnarled hands, rings flashing on every finger. "We know all of this. There's one thing you neglected to mention, however. My scouts told me that for the past week there have been archers positioned around the moat, poised to strike down any bird that comes within a league of the castle. Yet this morning these archers were curiously absent."

Lord Alberik, the quickest of the bunch, puzzled out Berent's meaning first. "You think the letter was a ploy by Lord Emery to draw us into parley?"

"Why not?" Zelda saw it as well. "He cannot be seen to ask us to parley first, especially if he means to be king. Signing it as Della Morley, he can be assured we'll at least consider this proposal...considering that the Morleys have supported the Crown completely during this war. And now is the perfect time to send this offer. Lady Morley's conveniently been held in the Maze up till this point, supposedly. It's been over a year, and both sides have grown lax. Were I Emery, I would have done much the same. Throw the dice, watch, wait. Either we'll accept his parley, or we'll ignore it and be starved out. There's nothing to lose." She shrugged. "The best thing to do about this is nothing, I say."

"Lord Emery couldn't have written the letter," Ellison argued, his desperation palpable. "I've corresponded with him over the years. His writing is much more spidery. Surely Lady Morley must have written this."

"As it happens, you're right there...Emery couldn't have written this." Berent shook his head languidly. "Anyone else could have, however. Perhaps one of his lords penned it, or a camp follower who has her letters. He could have had Lady Morley write it herself from the Maze, but that's a bit of a stretch for him. He's not _that_ skilled in intrigue."

Lord Burke coughed. "Your Grace...there's no question of _if_ Lady Morley could have been convinced to write such a letter? She _is_ an ardent supporter of the Crown, you know."

Berent stared at Lord Burke for a long time. "Arrick, the dungeons of Misery Maze can break a man's will surprisingly quickly. A woman's even faster."

An awkward silence fell. Zelda used the moment to take up the letter for herself, considering the words one last time. _A parley._ If only...but no, she dared not. She could not allow any of them to be taken alive, to be paraded as trophies. "So it's decided. We will do nothing."

Alberik looked at her first and longest. "We have no choice," he murmured, ever regretful, ever weary. "Sadly..."

Then came the answers of the other lords, "aye" and "agreed" in abundance, while Berent listened with his fingers steepled. All but Ellison. "I'm sorry, Your Grace, but I cannot accept this decision."

"You must." His obstinance annoyed her. _Does he ever see me for a queen? Has he ever?_ "You have no power here. You are under my protection."

"I hold no power here, that much is true." Ellison cleared his throat, as if to marshal his courage. "But my seat of Hellgate is well placed to cut off the West from Hyrule, if my castellan so chooses. And if news of my untimely death should reach my castellan...well, I have two thousand swords I've held back in defense of my keep that could be deployed. Two thousand swords could mean the difference between victory and defeat." Noon light shone in his dark blue eyes. "You would be wise not to underestimate me, Your Grace."

Zelda could not have been more shocked if he'd slapped her. "Are you _threatening_ me?"

"I mislike that word." Ellison inclined his head stiffly. "Let us say I am _advising_ you."

"Thank you for your advice, Denys," Berent said with a courtesy cold enough to freeze water. "Thank you all. I will think on all you have said. Leave me now. One of you will tell Norton what we've discussed here today."

"Tally," Zelda murmured while Berent's lords rose. "Where _is_ Tally?"

It was Alberik who answered. "Oh, Norton." He said the words with a laugh, but Zelda couldn't help but notice the sweat shining on his forehead. "You surely know how _he_ is. Most like he had a lively night with one of the maids, and..."

Berent slammed a fist down on the table, for a moment too angry to speak; it was well known how he detested whores. "I gave him a command. A royal _command_! Leave me now, before I grow wroth." His dark eyes flicked up to Zelda when he realized she was leaving too. "Not you, Zelda."

Their lords left them, and a strained silence fell over the council room. Berent shuffled spare bits of parchment together while Zelda looked down at her hands. They had not seen each other in a week...and it seemed neither of them could think of a word to say to the other. Ten years of marriage had formed a bond, Zelda was sure, but that bond extended only to trust, not easy companionship. In truth they had spent the majority of their marriage apart, with Berent ruling and Zelda in childbed, and they didn't have much in common. So Zelda held her silence and waited for Berent to speak, knowing he wouldn't want to speak to her alone unless there was a matter of import to discuss.

"Denys," he muttered at last. "We'll have to watch that one. He misses his family, and he's desperate to see them. I mislike the look in his eyes."

"He threatened me," Zelda pointed out. In easier days she might have laughed at the threat a lordling with some minor holdings in Gerudo Valley could pose, but with their strength all but at an end the danger felt real.

"Let him. It takes courage for Denys to make threats like that, and courage makes him stupid. I prefer my councilors courageous and stupid rather than cowardly and cunning." Berent made a mark on a piece of parchment. "He can do nothing here, for all his protestations otherwise. Now explain to me, wife, why you would have us reject the best chance we've had for victory in a long while."

How could she possibly explain her reasoning to him in terms he'd understand? Zelda bit the inside of her cheek as she considered her words. "We've committed ourselves to this siege, Berent. To parley with your brother at this point would make beggars of us all...would serve as betrayal to all we've fought for in this past year. My father once told me that it was better to be seen as a dead brave man than a live craven. And now I finally understand him."

"You make a good argument, Zelda." Berent nodded. "As it happens, I've come to the same conclusion. The gods granted me a vision in my seclusion, of a future where we went to parley with Emery. Suffice to say, neither of us were alive to see the end of it. Della Morley be damned. I'll tell my lords of my decision at our next meeting. For the nonce..." He shifted and grimaced. "We must keep our men in as high spirits as possible. I will visit the injured ones tonight, in the great hall. Are you sure you won't accompany me? It would be best for them to see us together..."

"No," Zelda said, too quickly. "Forgive me, Berent...I don't feel very well." And the reason behind it would have driven him mad: she could not get those tense, exciting moments she'd spent with Link in the great hall out of her mind. She yearned to see him again, to have him look on her with the longing and heat she felt within herself even now...it could never be allowed to happen again. _Or it could, if I so choose._ _If I want Link, I need only say so._ That was a new thought, and one that made her blush; never before had she considered keeping a paramour. It was hard enough to puzzle out her true feelings for him without facing this new choice. Zelda fled from it, banishing it to the back of her mind. _Was Berent as weak as I feel, when he dishonored himself in some woman's bed?_

Her husband's voice was all she needed to strengthen her resolve. "As you wish. Help me."

Zelda did as he bid her, summoning Berent's son and a few gaunt garrison men to help the king back to his bedchamber. Watching him go, all the indecision came rushing back. Berent was her husband, and though she felt no great love for him she didn't feel she could betray him by taking a lover. As far as Link went, her thoughts were all a tumult. Her mind kept returning to the subject of him, picking at a sore that had never really healed. _I'm his queen, not his lover, he must be reminded of that_, she decided one such time, only to decide a few minutes later, _I'll talk to him, and make my decision then. I will._

But those were foolish thoughts, keeping her mind from the real issue at hand. _Here I sit pondering whether or not to take Link into my bed like some fretful maiden girl,_ Zelda thought, disgusted, _while my people suffer and the realm is torn apart. Link would not love me half so well if he could see me now._

It was almost moonrise when he came to see her in her chambers. "Link." Zelda had been reading, but she set the parchment aside now. "Should you be out of bed? You look..."

__

He looks ghastly. For the first time she appreciated how thin he was, nothing more than skin pulled taut over bone. A swordbelt hung low on his narrow hips, but he wore no sword...and she couldn't help but notice how he seemed to favor his injured sword arm. Thin lines of pain were visible on his sweaty brow and beneath the yellow tangle of hair that passed for his beard, Zelda realized he was biting his lip. His eyes were big and blue, and just now clouded with pain. She wanted nothing more than to give him what comfort she could.

"You look well," she lied at last. "But tired."

Link scarcely seemed to hear her at first, but once his eyes found her face they never left it. "Yes," he murmured, thick and slow. "The doctor, he said...said the same. We must talk, Zelda. May I sit down?"

"Please do." He collapsed into a seat by the hearth, his eyes closing for a moment. Zelda took the chance to look him over once more, surprised by how quickly the blood from his arm wound had stained the undyed wool of his tunic. For him to risk so much, she knew this would be no simple matter. "You missed a lively council. We're to parley with Lord Emery, it seems." An offer that was on the brink of being rejected. A depressing thought, she reflected.

Link's eyes snapped open, and he stared at her for a long moment. "_You're_ to parley?" he asked softly, tasting the words. "Maybe I don't understand you as well as I thought, Zelda. You would never have consented to such ten years ago."

__

He is blunt. Feeling scrutinized under the weight of Link's gaze, Zelda looked down at herself and smoothed down her skirts, wondering if he could perceive her anxiousness. "But you..." She stopped; it wouldn't be wise to be the first to approach the subject, she decided. For the moment Link was completely ignoring the warm touches they'd shared in the great hall, maybe that was the wisest course. And there would never be a better time to gauge just how he felt about the siege. "Well, it _is_ an offer. Why should it be despised?"

"Because a week ago you would never have allowed that lord down there the chance to take you...alive. Do you think Lord Pollard lies in his tent of a night dreaming of an easy peace? No, don't think to answer. It was not you who agreed to this parley, was it? It was His Grace. Your _husband_." He said that word with such bitterness that any illusion Zelda held that this would be an ordinary talk was gone. "I swear, I don't know what possesses you to trust him. They're brothers, aren't they? It might be..."

"It's not." She had to shake her head at Link's suspicion. "I am queen, and without many close companions. I must trust _someone_. I've learned to rely on Berent, Link. He is my husband, though not my friend. And he never held any great love for Emery besides. He was more a reluctant father to him than anything else...and the two of them are too different yet too much alike to ever stand each other now that they are both men grown. If they have worked together all this time to steal my crown from me, then I'll have to congratulate the both of them for being more clever than I ever thought. Please...you must learn to trust my judgment a little."

"I do. My pardons, I forgot myself. I would never have survived to kill Ganondorf without you." Link sighed, wiping sweat from his brow. "There is something that's troubled me, Zelda. I've only seen a single maid here going about her business. The other women left the castle a year ago, I was there to see it. Tell me...why are _you_ still here?"

"You would know?" Zelda got to her feet and went to her narrow window. From here, she could see the westernmost line of nightfires. In an hour, maybe two, Emery's trebuchets would begin their nightly assault on the castle walls, picking off a few more garrison men, making the guilt Zelda felt ever more concentrated. "Very well. I am not one to run away from problems, Link...you should know that better than anyone. When Ganondorf sought to kill me, I resolved to live. I lost myself in another identity, and opposed his rule as much as I could. And after... I would have fought in our border war with the Calatians if Father hadn't forbade it. Well, he was no longer here when Lord Emery's vanguard arrived on my grounds, but there was another thing keeping me from fighting beside my men. _This_." She gestured down at her body, her voice becoming harder as she continued. "So I convinced Berent to force his brother to lay siege, and when both sides allowed their women to leave I told myself I would stay, that I would be a symbol of strength for my garrison men. And _that_ is why you find me here, Link."

Link was quiet for so long that Zelda turned around and looked at him, just to make sure that he was still there. There was an expression on his face that she didn't understand. "Zelda, I'm sorry."

"No," Zelda said softly. "Don't be sorry. I've done my duty. As you have..."

He shook his head. "A lot of what you've done is _more_ than duty. So many times you've shunned your own comfort, made your own life forfeit...only to prolong someone's pleasure or stop their pain. Can you truly say that it doesn't bother you, that it's nothing more than duty? Haven't you ever felt a sense of regret? Don't you feel any anger when you put your own wants last? This parley...I know you're against it, but don't you wonder what it would be like if you were for it? Tell me you haven't wondered and I'll call you a liar. You must...you _must_ be sad, thinking yourself condemned to death in this castle. Aren't you?"

"...Yes," she admitted reluctantly. _Sad and lost._ "But none of us can choose what destiny has in store for us. The gods give us what they will...men must do what they can with what they're given."

"Perhaps it's time for you to do more with what you have." Link stood.

"Link, you're a sweet fool." Zelda had to laugh, feeling an absurd sense of relief wash over her for the first time in a few moon's turns. For the moment, maybe everything would be okay. "I suppose I should weave myself a flower crown and put on my softest silk before I command the garrison to raise the portcullis, lower the drawbridge and allow me to pass through. I'm sure Lord Emery will allow me to go on my way as well. That's just...perfect."

Link came to her and cupped her cheek. "And so is this."

There was no time to think, no time to protest because just then he kissed her. His mouth was wet and hungry and he never seemed to notice her pox scars, or smell the stink of her. Before she knew quite what she was doing she responded to him, opening her mouth for his. His mouth tasted stale, and yet...when his tongue moved clumsily over hers, no other sensation had ever seemed so sweet. Zelda lost herself in the joint pleasure, and as she did, one of her hands rose between their bodies and clutched a handful of Link's tunic in a fist, holding him close. _This is the way things should have been,_ she thought, exulting._ All this time_ _I've lived a dream, and only now have I awakened._

It was a long kiss, but as soon as it ended she stepped back, outraged and exulting still...and excited. Only Berent had ever kissed her before, and never like that. _My vows._ "I...you...you should not have done that." She brought a hand to her lips, memorizing how Link's lips had felt there. "I'm a woman wed. Your queen."

"My queen," Link acknowledged, "and the bravest, wisest, most extraordinary woman I have ever known. Zelda..."

"_Don't._" Zelda forced her face blank before it could betray her. "This is folly. Hear me, nothing must come of this. Surely there must be some other woman who loves you well. Dream of her. I can't...I _can't_."

"There's been no one else," Link said, and then he was there. He touched her hair. "Only you."

"Only me?" Zelda struggled to hold onto her outrage. It seemed to melt in proportion to the amount of time she spent looking up at Link's face. "It was only me you dreamed of, only my smile you wanted to see, only my lips you yearned to feel against your skin? Even across the water...it was only me you thought of? No crofter's daughter chance met on campaign, no ragged camp follower, no pampered whore in some brothel? Tell me, Link...and tell it true. It was only me you longed for, only this?"

Link lowered his eyes.

"No?" she whispered. "Then don't play the boy with me. You're no lovestruck knight, and I'm not the virgin princess whose hand you seek. All is changed."

"All is changed," he relented. "I've known other women, aye, and you're a woman wed...but _sometimes prayers are answered_, remember? The gods have given us our second chance, and I swear, this time I mean to fight for your hand." When confronted with his words and the look in his eyes Zelda's outrage and the years slipped away, and the two of them were as they had been ten years ago on a sweet summer day. Melting, Zelda touched his face; her hand moved to his chin as Link brought their mouths together once more, and despite all her vows for a moment everything managed to be heaven.


	7. Chapter 7: Link

This chapter was a bitch.

Thanks to my beta, TML, for getting me through it. I may or may not revise this chapter later since I'm still not completely in love with how it segues from 6 (perfectionist, who me?). Anyway, feedback is always welcome, and enjoy!

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He dreamt of another day, of the dark tower where his epic battle ended. Zelda stood suspended in her crystal prison, Ganondorf was bent before his organ, and he was coming up the stairs, Master Sword in hand and destiny singing in his veins. All around him the organ's notes echoed powerfully, making the walls shake to an ominous beat.

Now, as then, the righteous fury had hold of him, dictating his actions; now, as then, he could feel the sharp sting of the cut beneath his tunic where the Iron Knuckle's axe had grazed him. The dream not only mimicked the reality, but surpassed it somehow; he felt the danger more keenly than ever before. When he stopped before the door, the feeling almost overwhelmed him. His hands shook as he slid the key into the huge door's lock, but Link willed himself to remain unafraid.

Within waited Zelda...and Ganondorf, his thick fingers moving almost tenderly over the organ's keys. Link couldn't ignore the electric shock that went through him when he saw the two of them in that tower room, couldn't master the overwhelming sense of unity he felt. This was how it should have been, he realized: the three of them together, shining together... The Triforce of Courage burned golden on his hand.

"The Triforce parts are resonating..." Ganondorf said after a pause, more to himself than Link. The man was in his forties or fifties, with red hair and eyes that burned with the light of a thousand fires.

"It doesn't matter," Link heard himself say. "We two are destined to protect the Triforce from you always."

Ganondorf slammed a fist down on his keys, creating a discordant sound that shivered through the tower room. "I commanded you to give me what is mine by rights and you dare refuse me, with naked steel in hand? You _dare_?" The self-styled king got to his feet and stalked towards Link, waves of darkness following behind like a train.

Link held his sword steady, facing the oncoming evil with sober eyes. "I'm prepared to die to protect it."

"And I'm prepared to give death to you." Ganondorf laughed hollowly, the Triforce of Power throbbing on the back of his hand. He unsheathed his sword and held it with both hands, almost reverently. That sword was dark, smoldering like the blackest soul. "Here's how your life ends, boy. You on the point of my steel."

Navi had fled before Ganondorf's dark advance, so Link's eyes strayed to the last source of external strength remaining to him…Zelda. She looked wholly different than she had in the Temple of Time, as if her terrible captivity had transformed her into a shade of her future self: defiant rather than frightened, she radiated a potent contempt for the evil king's magic power that seemed to permeate beyond the translucent crystal. _Now_, her eyes seemed to say when their gazes met, and that was all it took to strengthen his resolve.

"No," Link heard himself say as he turned his attention back to Ganondorf, "here's how it begins." He raised his sword and brought it down in a powerful killing arc. Ganondorf's own sword flashed up to parry, and the two blades came together in a clash of steel and magic. "_Link_!" Zelda screamed. Absorbed in destiny and the rhythm of swordplay and Zelda's desperate cry, Link never noticed this memory confusing itself with another, fading to something as old and insignificant as he felt.

"Link!"

When Link opened his eyes he found himself standing in a forest clearing on a summer day. He could smell the scent of far-off honeysuckle and peonies, yet even those familiar comforts failed to bring him pleasure. He started to pace without questioning the impulse to do so, keeping his eyes trained on the undergrowth as he tried to rid himself of the memory of her voice. "_Link!"_ she'd screamed a thousand years ago… "You will refuse him." His voice was low and thick with doubt.

"I cannot." He raised his eyes; Zelda sat on a fallen tree nearby. Save for the golden rope of sapphires around her neck, she looked the part of a tavern wench: all in roughspun with her hair artlessly tangled, the smell of wine clung to her instead of perfume. It was hard to ignore the tenseness of her frame, the way her voice trembled. Distress had given her a vulnerable look; if anything, it only served to make her more beautiful. "I've accepted him, and pledged my holy word."

"Pledged your holy word, Zelda? Is that from some song?" Link ground his teeth. "Yes, you _are_ a maid, I see that now."

Zelda turned her face away. "Don't mock me. Not _you_. Do you think I wanted this? Berent--"

"Some swamp lord."

"_Berent_," she repeated, angry now, "was arranged to me. 'Your mother wanted you to marry her brother's firstborn,' Father said. _Now_ do you understand? I couldn't refuse him...not even if I wanted to."

That gave Link pause; he'd spent countless days with Zelda since he'd been sent back in time, and he could name only a handful of times that she'd mentioned her mother. Even so, his decision was made, as it had been long before this noon meeting. He'd weighed his words carefully, had considered Zelda's reaction, and could reach no other satisfactory conclusion. He said the words now, as he'd practiced them so many times before. "Then I shall challenge for the right to your hand."

"_No_," Zelda blurted, springing to her feet as her eyes grew wide. "You cannot. You _must_ not. Berent's too old and ill for single combat; he'll name his brother to fight in his stead. I know your prowess with swords, but Sir Derren is renown for his skill as well...it's too chancy. And if Father should make the wrong assumption about why you raised the challenge...I might not see you for a very long time. I could not bear that. Don't you see what sheer madness that would be?"

"I thought the reason why I'd challenge for your hand would be clear," Link deadpanned, trying to hide his volatile emotions as he searched Zelda's face. "Marry me, Zelda. Tell your father it's me you want. I'll call you wife for the realm to hear, and if your swamp lord dares raise a cry we'll send him running back to his bogs..."

The princess had been coming toward him but suddenly she stopped, staring at him wide-eyed. Sunlight gleamed in the tangles of her golden hair and a vein pulsed high on her temple, but she never spoke. All Link could hear was the distant laughter of one of the children, high and mocking.

The awkward silence went on and on until it was more than Link could bear. "Zelda..." he began, taking a step forward.

Zelda drew back, her mouth growing taut. "Very droll. Can you be serious for once?" she said finally, sharply.

"Do you hear me laughing?"

"Haven't you been listening?" Desperation was overcoming her disbelief. "It will be hard enough to convince Father's council to accept Berent as my consort rather than king outright. And I...you... Even if we were to wed, the council would have the marriage annulled as soon as they learned of it. You _know_ that."

"If they won't do as you wish, dissolve the council and appoint a new one more to your liking. I understand that's within your power." He closed the distance between them in quick steps and pulled her close. "All I want is you. I want to comfort you and protect you and make you happy. We are the only two in this world who could understand each other, I know we are; I realized that when we defeated Ganondorf. Zelda, I am not whole without you. I..."

"Link..." Zelda's voice was sick, and yet she did not pull away. "Your head is full of songs. Cast this dream aside, I beg you. You do not understand." Words she'd clearly never meant to say tumbled from her mouth. "For a long time, my father was the only one I could trust. It's only because of him I know my mother, and when the council called me mad because of my dreams and tried to strip me of my birthright, he protected me. I would obey his dying wish...but it's more than that. I have a duty to my leal people. If I must marry Berent to keep them safe, then so be it. This is something that rises far above you and I...so please, let us hear no more talk of marriage for the nonce. Perhaps the gods in their wisdom will give us a second chance in the future." She touched his hair. "Sometimes prayers are answered."

Time froze for a moment, as if purposefully allowing Link to memorize how Zelda had looked at that moment: the desperation in her eyes, her flushed cheeks, her lips still moving soundlessly as if in prayer. And then it all faded, sending him tumbling into some thick black sleep that was blessedly dreamless. Yet Zelda's face haunted him, even as that sweet summer day crumbled. Her rejection of his offer for her hand had been a crushing blow, had made his every memory of the Forest bittersweet…yet it had been a relief as well, he must admit it. For though he did love Zelda well, his love for adventure eclipsed her entirely; it burned in his blood, raged through his soul. Therein lay what he'd viewed for ten years as a betrayal of himself.

Though given her second chance, Zelda's life was predestined still. It was her fate – her wish – to sit the Hylian Throne, to bear sons to continue the royal line, to listen to those who kissed her fingers in submission and answer their plaintive pleas with wisdom and kindness. Yet, even if he were to defeat Sir Derren in single combat, Link could not have abided sitting as prince consort, ruling from Hyrule's oldest castle year after year. The great wide world called to him. It was a part of himself he was unwilling to abandon, even for Zelda herself, and a part of himself he could never forgive.

That guilt was galling, draining, making him wish more than anything that he didn't have dual passions to choose between – but even the alternative seemed bittersweet. The prudent choice would have been never to allow himself to become close to Zelda, but bereft of her friendship Link knew he would have long since been lost. From tentatively forming bonds beyond their shared trauma at ten, to reveling in casual intimacy at fourteen, to it all culminating in seeing her as a woman as if for the first time at sixteen and realizing he was falling in love with who she was, what she was becoming…the relationship they'd formed together couldn't be so easily discarded.

It was that belief – that their love would transcend time, any and all events – that motivated Link, feverish and weak as he was, to visit Zelda's bedchamber and act on their too-long dormant feelings. Kissing her impulsively as he had was beyond dangerous; not only was she married, but his queen and the king's wife. Discovery was sure to doom him to execution…something that Zelda realized as well, for after their second kiss she drew him down to sit on the edge of her bed to talk about both their relationship and the implications of what they'd done. There they'd sat for hours, their hands clasped as they talked.

It had all seemed to pass as if a dream, the encounter leaving Link both exulting in finally kissing Zelda and disturbed beyond the reach of words by his continued betrayal against his king…though that latter feeling was hardly strong enough to overwhelm his desire to continue along this dangerous course. _I plan on persisting in my villainy_, he'd told her before he'd left, but the words seemed empty now. Loath as he was to acknowledge it, Zelda _was_ a woman wed, and her sense of loyalty was easily twice as pronounced as his own – and truly, what awaited them now but death? No matter how many times he considered the possibilities after returning to the great hall, the verdict remained the same – nothing else would ever happen. Nothing would ever happen. So thinking – so knowing – his subconscious had cruelly and practically opted to focus on thwarted and wasted opportunities, on all he'd had loved and lost over the years.

_We've already had our second chance_, Link realized then. It had been a long time since he had felt so sad.

When Link finally awoke, disquiet running sluggishly through his veins, he found the bastard staring down at him. "Dry off and get dressed," the man said without preamble the moment he saw Link was awake. "My father awaits you."

Link sat up. The great hall swam deliriously, the walls awash with a ruddy firelight straight out of his fever dreams. His injured sword arm ached fiercely, he realized...and he'd managed to sweat profusely during his night of dreaming. "Your father?" he repeated drowsily in a voice hoarse with disuse.

"That's right. His Grace the king." The bastard drew off a few feet and threw Link a tunic. The roughspun was scratchy against his healing skin, but surprisingly clean. "Now hurry up, he doesn't like to be kept waiting."

With painful slowness, Link did as he was bid, feeling numb and dreamy. Though he tried his hardest to concentrate on putting on his clothes, his mind kept returning to the tower, to that sweet summer day. He did not think it a good omen, that he should dream of those days again after all these years. _It doesn't matter,_ he had to tell himself. _Dreams are dreams. The two of us are living our second chance now, and gods help me but I do love it._

He forced himself to rise, ignoring the way his wounds burned in protest. The great hall seemed emptier than it had been last night when he rose to pursue Zelda, lonelier than when he'd last left it. Without proper nutrition and with only one doctor in residence, the weaker of the wounded were dropping like flies; Link counted himself lucky that he wasn't among them. Those who still had the will to live were healing much more quickly than expected, eager to end this nightmare with steel in their fists...and perhaps this nightmare would have a happier ending than any of them dared hope. Link could not forget Zelda's words from the night before; he clung to them, from them gleaned the hope that had seemed so absent in the aftermath of his dreams. _There's to be a parley. In the worst case, Lord Emery will claim the crown and send Zelda into exile, and if the gods are good I'll live to go with her._ They could house themselves with any number of merchants in Calatia...or, if Zelda was unwilling to drink from that cup, they could set out for adventure on their own. He could see it all so clearly.

In a moment of clarity Link cursed himself for his naïveté. _My head is full of songs,_ he remembered bitterly. To be sure, Emery would never chance to leave his brother alive if he should claim the throne, and Zelda…she had been born with a surname that carried weight, was a powerful woman in her own right and presumably still fertile. Emery would see her dead, and count himself well rid of her, or else marry her to solidify his claim to the throne. And even if he did neither of those things – bereft of her throne, Zelda would never consent to traverse the world with only the warmth of consummated love and lust to comfort her. Link gave his head a shake, as if to rid himself of those shameful feverish thoughts.

"What are you looking at?" the bastard snapped, drawing him out of his reverie. "My father's bedchamber is this way. Come along."

Reluctantly, weakly, Link followed after him. They left the great hall and set out into the hallways, progressing quickly through the dark twisting passages. "Your father's bedchamber is a queer meeting place," Link said at last, keeping a hand on the wall for support as he walked.

The bastard snorted. "My father's weak and gouty, and you're not important enough for him to open the Audience Chamber for," he said. "Besides, this shouldn't take long. He means to make you answer for your treasons. Careful, there's a flight of stairs ahead."

Dread settled into Link's heart, wiping away all reason and all the puerile fantasies of life after this siege he'd entertained during the long hours he'd spent bedridden in the great hall. He must have known he couldn't hide the truth forever; in his dreams, he had known... And the timing stunned him, making his mind inflamed with unseemly suspicion that had nothing to do with the treason he'd committed by trying to escape the castle. Link had never seen the king's face, but he imagined it now, remembering him saying his vows beside Zelda in the Temple of Time. _How much could he know…how much _does _he know?_

The stairs were painful to climb, each one sending his body into a new searing agony. Link was quiet for a while, wondering what madness compelled him to keep walking toward certain death, till his mouth twisted in a grimace. "How did he know I was still alive?"

"When I was a child, my father told me his eyes saw the truth always." The bastard sighed, attempting to comb through his matted brown hair with his fingers. "As it happens, he went to visit you poor wretches in the great hall last night, and he saw you sleeping. When he looked at you, he knew."

_With some of your help, no doubt,_ Link thought dully, glaring his hatred into the bastard's back. When the man stopped before a nondescript door, Link knew they had arrived. He couldn't take his eyes from that door...with no guards flanking it, it seemed even plainer than Zelda's door had seemed the first time he'd opened it a week ago. A week ago when he'd thought himself doomed to death, then saved by love's gentle mercy – and now fated to die again the moment he crossed the threshold of that door. "I fought for him. I'm a garrison man…"

"…and a friend of the queen. Let us not forget that."

"Perhaps you should tell that to your father, so he'll remember it better."

"Why should I? It's disgraceful enough to know that you've lived this long thanks to the _grace_ of my father's wife. I know my father's sentence for traitors seems hard to cravens like you, but it's no harder than it has to be. His lord father thought much the same, and none of his lords bannermen dared rebel against him. Lord Collin did what he could to prepare my father for kingship, but it was only when my uncle raised his banners against him that he learned the most important lesson of all. My father is a gentle man, and there was a time during his reign when men were as apt to call him Good King Berent as they are to call your friend Good Queen Zelda...but if he is gentle to traitors during a time like this, treasons will engulf him. He does what needs to be done. Choose to believe that or not, but you must accept it."

For a moment, Link's surprise overrode his anger; he'd thought the bastard incapable of feeling the warmth that had been present in his voice just then. "You love him," he blurted, incredulous.

"Of course. He's my father." The bastard inclined his head slightly. "Now go."

There wasn't a thing Link wanted to do less than open that door, but there was no choice; he opened the door as the bastard watched expectantly and entered King Berent's bedchamber.

When last Link had seen the king, in the Temple of Time ten years ago, he had been nothing but the back of a head bracketed by two of King Harkinian's sworn swords. Whenever he'd thought of the man, as he had often in Calatia, his features had been hard and cold. But the king looked nothing like he had in his imagination; instead, he looked like someone's grandfather. Small and shrunken in his immense bed, still in his nightclothes, King Berent had snow-white hair and deep laugh lines that made him seem almost kindly...yet when his eyes, more brown than green, focused on him, Link felt a thrill of disquiet. "That will be all, Isel," he said to the castle doctor busying himself at the king's desk. "Leave me alone with the traitor so we may speak privily."

Probably counting himself lucky to be out of it, the doctor left with a quickness that was startling. When the door shut, Link heard a large thump as someone barred it, and another wave of unease swept over him. _The bastard_, he thought, but it didn't matter. Perhaps that should have driven him to his knees, but he remained standing as if spellbound, considering this man who had become Lord of the Realm and Zelda's husband. _Old, gouty...and unremarkable._ His eyes settled on the painfully swollen joints of Berent's hands and Link wondered if he'd ever been capable of so much as cupping his wife's cheek or helping her unlace her gown whenever they succumbed to passion, unable to suppress a sudden stab of mingled contempt and jealousy. Finally he bent the knee. "Your Grace. What would you have of me?"

"Get up," Berent said coldly, his voice a hair above a whisper. "Kneeling won't save you now. I would look on your face."

Rising without aid was hard, but Link was resolved to show no weakness before the king. After staring at him for several tense moments, Berent nodded. "Yes. I see it now." Link watched him as he drank from a cup of water he held, watched the way his throat worked. "When I was in seclusion with the gods I saw your face. I wondered why you looked so bloody familiar...and then my son told me the truth. I didn't want to believe there were any traitors left in my castle, but if the gods are to be believed, you'll bring both me and my wife to our deaths at parley if I allow it. I could not bear that."

_Is he a liar, or mad, or both?_ Seclusion was an old custom that often resulted in death because of the long period of time the supplicant was required to go without food, water, and contact with other men in order to receive the gods' favor...but then, Berent _was_ of the South, where they kept the old ways. And to think that he would bring the king and queen to death at parley – to think that he would bring Zelda to death – how could that be possible now, when he possessed no great mind and was worth less than the sword he carried? Link dropped his eyes and said nothing, though his mind whirled with turmoil.

The old man went on, oblivious. "You tried to escape my castle. When last I heard of you, you were headed for my traitor brother...yet now I find you here. How is that so?"

He had nothing to gain by lying; Link saw that plain enough. "I went to your wife for quarter," he said, but what he wanted to say was, _Aye, and more than that._ _I kissed your wife, Your Grace. Your wife..._

"Oh, yes, her. Zelda. I suppose you must know her, else she would have crushed you between her fingers...unless she has no idea what you've done. Does she?" Link held his silence, battling against the urge to say something vicious, and that seemed to be all the answer Berent needed; his laugh was an undignified bray. "I thought not."

"Are you going to kill me?" Link had faced death bravely once, a thousand times, and he wasn't going to give this old man the pleasure of seeing him skirt around the issue.

"Are you going to kill me, _Your Grace_," Berent corrected. "Be that as it may, I have no intention of killing you. My sweet wife has granted you clemency. The choice is entirely hers."

Relief washed over Link in a wave so strong it left him dizzy. Zelda...surely he could convince Zelda he was no traitor; she would understand his purpose behind trying to escape the castle. She was completely different from her implacable husband, he was certain; she was as she had been in that dark tower, on that sweet summer day… "As you say, Your Grace. Do I have your leave to go?"

"You do not." The king's small mouth became even smaller as he pressed his lips together. "It seems to me that you require a lesson, turncloak or traitor or whatever you call yourself. The other traitors who tried to escape with you got their lesson when they were thrown over the walls to treat with my brother Emery, but I can't imagine that would teach you a thing. After all, you begged for my wife's favor without any trace of guilt. Yes, you are a special case indeed."

_You dare?_ Link wanted to shout at his king. _You dare lecture me about treason when you mean to parley?_ He wanted to wipe that smug smile off Berent's face, either with fists or words; he wished he could. Yet he did no more than hold his silence, a strange loyalty to Zelda welling up within him and quelling his anger. Still, the hypocrisy of that statement was enough to take his breath away.

"You say you plan to parley with this brother of yours. What sort of lesson is there in that, Your Grace?" Link challenged, forgetting himself. "Is it truly treason to save yourself?"

"Well, as to that," Berent said, a strange smile twisting his lips, "were I you, I'd worry less about my brother and more about my wife."


End file.
